Letting go

There are two trash bags full of books in my garage. There will be more by the time I'm finished. I've read most of the books that I am discarding, but there a good number in there that I have not read. Those are the ones that I've had for years and have a very difficult time imagining myself actually reading. I've held onto them because I've always told myself that there will come a time when I may want to read that book. It's time to let them go. It's time to let go of books that I've read but know I will never read again (I very, very rarely reread books, the only books I can recall reading were from long series.). I've always fought against my desire to buy books. A few years ago I questioned spending the money. Now it's the space. I've had books stashed all over my house. The shelves are full so they've spread to piles on my desk and stashes in different drawers and cabinets.

The pressure of having all these books bearing down on me has become inhibiting. I can't move forward because I have all of these books, accumulated over most of my life. I just put some Stephen King books that I read in high school into the trash bags, and those aren't the only high school era books that I am letting go. I've had some them for over 20 years and they're unread. Why keep them around? Those were books that were intriguing to me when I was a teenager. Those are artifacts of a different time in my life. By getting rid of the books, I feel like I'm freeing myself to move forward from that time.

The books and my hero narrative are vestiges of a different life. I chose to have the books in my life, but the hero narrative seeped in and has refused to let go. I've clung to these books, telling myself that I can't let them go just like I've maintained a fierce grip on this whole hero thing. There are roles that I must play, family dynamics that I must preserve. No, these are not things that I must do. They are relics of my emotional history. Books were my refuge during the time that I developed my hero thing. Books surely contributed to its strength and persistence. In stepping away from some of these books, I'm stepping away from a part of my past that weakens me. In turning away from the past, I can turn more completely to the present. I am less encumbered to pursue depth and meaning.

The past is not a burden that I am obligated to carry. I can choose to set it down and leave it behind. I make that choice.

More musings on the role of the heroic, why it's pathetic and what it means going forward

Recognition of this hero narrative as a driver for my behaviors, preferences, and other unconscious motives isn't necessarily a trigger to rethink my entire life and identity. It's a chance to hijack that immediate response to something heroic and replace that impulse with something more intentional. That happened this morning. One of the books in the Kindle Daily Deal was a memoir by an F-16 pilot. My hero pleasure centers lit up at the potential of this book. There was all kinds of elite level stuff, doing things that are hard, being the best, it was all right there. Of course I was ready to buy it, but I stopped and took a moment to think about what I was feeling. I didn't see it right away, but the realization of the link to my hero thing came into focus pretty quickly. I didn't buy the book.

It's not that the pursuit of the heroic if necessarily bad. It's more about recognizing what I'm responding to and finding a different way to react. I've spent too long going with the automatic appeal of these types of stories. Stopping to take a look at what was so enticing about a book describing flying an F-16 against SAM sites lets me see a little deeper into what I have going on under the surface. It's the appeal of the best of the best, the elite, the distinct and clearly different level of performance. Those are the stories that I crave. Winning the competition, being thought of as special, that's what makes my psyche really sing when I come across these things. The stories are definitely exciting and highly entertaining, but it's the elite status of the story teller that really makes all the difference for me.

Pursuing the heroic isn't about going after what you want, it's all about doing what others find unique, valuable, and difficult. Decisions and actions are not based on what I find inherently appealing. My life turns into a pursuit of opportunities to impress other people. It's not even what other people will find legitimately  appealing. It's about what I think should be impressive to other people. It's possible to end up doing something that I don't find all that appealing in an effort to impress people I don't even know by doing something that they might not even find all that impressive. It's crazy! Well, I should say it was crazy because that tendency was much stronger in my youth, but it's echo is still very strong in my life as an adult.

That's another aspect of this whole thing that has me disturbed. If the other orientation wasn't bad enough, the persistence of this immature motivation deep into my adulthood just adds another level of desperation. I can cut myself some slack and see that wanting to emulate heroes was a pretty decent way to deal with a lack of affection from my parents, a pretty weak self-image, and a guide for the right way to behave when I was a kid. It served its purpose and I should have moved on to more mature ways of engaging with life. That didn't happen, at least not as completely as it could have. I carried that legacy into my marriage and parenting and career. The hero encompasses so much of my identity it even colors which books I choose to read!

Seeing myself as the hero and doing all that I could to make that image a reality was limiting. The adoption of that orientation immediately put typical youth activities out of bounds. The hero adheres to all expectations (at least the conception of the heroic that I adhered to) and strives to stay within the lines of cultural expectations. The hero isn't a rebel. The hero accepts the challenges placed before him. To reject those challenges would be unthinkable. I wanted to be praised and adored by authority figures and those who could speak to my superior character, intelligence, and ability. There was no need to explore boundaries or wander off into unpopular but personally appealing activities. The hero makers were pretty clear on what they wanted so I went about giving it to them.

It's easy to take this idea and beat myself with it. But how will this insight impact me as I continue to live my life? Recognizing its role in my choices is a good first step. I don't need to reinvent myself, but consciously moving away from what a much younger version of myself used to get through the day will allow me to embrace and accept me. Chasing some idea of the heroic is really just a way to replace some negative view of myself with something more appealing. (Saving my brother, a task set by my mother, yet another way for me to pursue the hero. I'm really starting to hope that I'm just taking this whole idea too far...) Rejecting the heroic as the ideal allows me to just do what feels right rather that what I SHOULD be doing. Simple example, I was on a kick a month or so ago about reading harder books. The hero should suffer to go beyond the merely mortal and strive for more, and as such he should be willing to tackle the really challenging novels. Breaking that train of thought would be a good first step.

Always trying to be the hero

So my part of the giant corporation is undergoing a strategic refresh. Maybe it's time for me to refresh my strategy. I've been dancing around doing something like this for awhile, but I've dismissed it as just another way for me to think and plan without actually doing anything. A quick little insight into one of my big patterns (something that was really evident in my youth that has ebbed in import over the years but still pulls on my orientation to life) has me rethinking the value of coming up with a new something to center my life.

I've always wanted to be the hero. I came to this insight in a round about manner, but the key to the realization came when I thought about my favorite movies, particularly the movies that really moved me when I was a kid. Top Gun was a favorite. I watched Last of the Mohicans every time I passed over it on TV. Star Wars was my life for a big chunk of my youth. The trend continues into adulthood. Braveheart. Gladiator. Spartacus was the first show that I watched using Netflix. The hero story is not limited to movies. You're always the hero when you play video games. I preferred games where with quests that could be completed. Sports games were never really my thing (unless I was beating my brother). I read comic books and played sports. Making the winning play, being the hero of the game, was one of my go to daydreams when I was in high school. I tried so hard to convince myself that I was distinct and special.

The desire to be the hero captures so much of what has resonated strongly in my life. There are other memories that I can think of, things that are too difficult to record in something like this post, that are consistent with this hero narrative. These recollections (like the predominant story I acted out when I was playing in the trees behind my house or when I was riding my bike back and forth along the road behind a different house) give the role that these heroic stories from popular culture had in my life much greater relevance than simply being stuff that most guys like. I just can't ignore the centrality of the hero image as a core part of my self-image.

As I look back over the patterns that I've followed for the last few years, this idea of trying to be the hero pops up again and again. Heroes go on quests. School has been one of my quests. Getting into law school. Getting my MBA. Those were trials I used to prove my perseverance and mettle. My PhD falls into that category as well. The pursuit of that degree was the driving motivation of my life from my senior year of college until I finished the degree. That's almost 10 years spent focused on achieving a difficult goal. That's not to say it was all about this hero thing, but it's consistency with the hero's journey. Even my decision to volunteer to help with challenging things at work fit into this idea of being the hero. My work on launching new products came after a failure to launch similar products with a different company. That was my way of saving the day. The same thinking applies to my current efforts to get a product through the FDA approval process. It's a chance to save the day.

My initial response to this insight is not positive. This pursuit of the heroic hints at desperation and need for acceptance. This is why I think it's time to rethink my approach. Well, rethinking my approach isn't really the crux of the matter. It's more about figuring out what gets me motivated and excited and decoupling that from this quest for recognition and special status. It's the status seeking inherent in wanting to be the hero that really bothers me.

Predicting the future

My boss's boss is just trying to protect his own ass. This was my realization as I was running through a fancy neighborhood with huge houses (way too close together) this morning. All signs point to this strategic refresh resulting in an organization along the lines of our brands. The people who run my group are actively trying to prevent that kind of fracture. The kind of things we do can't get done if you break the groups into tiny pieces, at least that's their take on the situation. They haven't really thought about what it would take to make that kind of organization a reality. (Writing that sentence gives me some ideas, this could finally be the chance to split the routine regulatory kind of work from the innovative product development stuff.) They're only looking to protect their role and position. Breaking things up would definitely diminish their influence. That's all they see. They're not looking at what this whole refresh is trying to accomplish and looking for the best way to make that happen. And that's why this refresh will likely fail.

The whole point of this reorganization is to expand the business. The targets are not small incremental steps. This is an effort to get things growing now. You can't keep doing business as usual to make the new revenue targets. The business needs to be reshaped, reoriented, and rebuilt. The culture has to change. To make this happen, it looks to me like our new president is making an effort to cut back on the bureaucracy and oversight to give the brands space to innovate and grow (that's the kernel for one tough question). The culture of going up every rung of the ladder to get approval must be replaced by people taking accountability for doing what they feel needs to get done to make projects move forward.

That is so opposite of the way the culture works now, I just don't see how a culture of doing whatever it takes to move a project forward replaces the need to get approval at every single step. I would love to see the governance of my building get eviscerated, but nobody would be able to function without some kind of organizational coverage. I've realized over the last year and half that the primary role of a manager in my building is to take accountable for other people's decisions. Nobody wants to be wrong, which makes them uncomfortable doing what they know needs to get done. They want permission, which shifts the accountability for the action to the person who granted permission. This is not the mindset of a nimble organization.

Culture isn't the only problem. I also struggle to see how the company grows revenues without taking a hit on profit margins. Margins kill so many of our projects. How much a hit to margins will we be willing to take to grow revenues? If the goal is grow revenues and preserve margins, that dictates a big part of what kind of projects we'll be able to pursue.

Senior staff protecting their turf, culture, margins, these are big company problems. If this refresh is an effort to get a big company to think and act like a small company, there is no way it will work.

This is my chance to finally make a difference

I spent the week before my vacation questioning what I was doing at work. Bored, listless, unmotivated; these are not optimal states. Yet another exploration into what I really wanted out of life was in the offing. I imagined taking this deep plunge into my values to see what I could find. I usually talked myself into doing something work related rather than conduct this largely useless and most likely fruitless mental exercise. Thinking about what matters to me and coming up with a plan to get more engaged with my work wasn't going to do much. I have to actually do something to make a change.

Or other people in my organization can decide to flip the business upside down and make those changes for me. That's what happening now. The actual details of the change have not been shared, but reading between the lines has given me a pretty good sense of what is coming. This is a pivotal moment. The principled part of me wants to stomp its figurative foot and pout about the de-emphasis in the science. The careerist part of me sees the opportunity in this change. This plan is meant to be a paradigm shift in how we do business. People will work hard to keep things from changing too much. They will go back to other organizational plans that were similar and use that anchor to keep things from being too different.

I've been looking for ways to influence and change the organization for years. The biggest obstacle that I've faced in making a difference is the blockade of seniority that resists big changes. That big change is here. This is my chance. I have to take it.