Carving Out Our Own Space

When you grow up with one family you think all families for the good and for the not good, are like yours. Then you step out into the real world and discover it is not so.

It's the same for your place of work.

I worked for a company for seven years. It had its ups and it had its downs. I could chart both but only within the context of what I knew. As I've made small steps out into the world beyond our family business, I've started to see the bigger reasons why those good and bad things existed as they did.

I volunteer at an arts organization and I work part time at another. Let's call them Arts Org and Theater Org respectfully. The longer I've volunteered at the Arts Org the more I've come to understand just how dysfunctional it is. The organization works really hard and does amazing work but the people within the organization are overworked and hate their office life. There is a pettiness and passive aggressiveness and a defensiveness that reflects a bit of what I felt at my old job.

The Theater Org on the other hand doesn't have that. Or at least not enough to become aware of in the first few months. Sure, it's still a group of overworked, underpaid, passive people, but the way they talk isn't passive aggressive. There isn't a culture of blame and defensiveness. I find it startling but I think I've also begun to figure out how the two evolved.



People need roles. They want roles. They want to know what they are responsible for and then they want to be able to be responsible for it. People don't like ambiguity. They want to know that they can work their ass off at something and when they come back the next day they can pick up where they left off. And in a place without clear job definitions there fills this thick tar like substance that makes people feel like they always have to fight to stay where they are.

At the Arts Org, there is no strong leadership. People are hired for one job but then get say in a different job. Someone who is technically suppose to be working on a database is suddenly being asked to refresh the coffee. It makes people feel unstable like their job is always being threatened. Not because they are going to get fired and the company is going to promote that young hot thing but because no one has drawn clear lines for everyone, the lines are always moving. And if you let the lines move too far then you will have lost all these things you've been working on and for.

At the Theater Org, people have clear job descriptions. No one has tried to tell me how to do my job almost from day one when I wasn't even sure how to do my job. People are great about answering questions when I have them, but until I ask, they do not tell me how to do it. (Unless I'm messing up.) No one in marketing is waiting in the wings to take over my job. None of the actors. No maintenance guy is telling me how I should do it. No one. And it makes me better at taking criticism when it does come because it only ever comes from the people who should be giving it to me either because they are my boss or because they are giving me criticism in their particular area of expertise.

For example, I was making the banks (where we keep our money for concessions, etc) more difficult, and the woman who counts all the money in the front office and from weekend concessions told me how she does it and it made sense. I could take the advice because she was an expert in that area telling me how she does it. It wasn't the lighting guy suddenly thinking he had an idea about how to do my job better.

And this makes a really big difference.  And ironically I am more open to new ideas and implementing good ones that don't come from me because I don't have to worry that if I give an inch, they'll take a mile.

Armed with this knowledge, I look back to my time at my parent's company I am amazed the experience didn't ruin our relationship completely. They inserted their opinions into everything. People who weren't doing any of the real labor associated with ideas could pop in last minute and change everything because they thought they had a better idea. It meant that I spent 5 years of my marketing life fighting desperately to not lose ground. And anytime I gained ground (like actually doing a real marketing campaign) I knew that at ANY MOMENT all of that could be taken away, all of the hundred and hundreds of hours of work could be taken away as soon as our office admin had a new idea and shared it with my Dad or vice versa.

So it's in these thoughts I have very mixed emotions about my sister's email to my parents and I that she's decided to take the family company on as a marketing assignment. She doesn't give a fuck about marketing (something I am very passionate about) but she has to choose a company for business school project and she's chosen ours. Z told me I was within my right to ask her choose a different company, but I don't want to be that person. If there is room to learn and grow, I want to take it.

But I know my parents' track record. They love to listen to the new person. They love to get excited about the new persons' ideas even if they haven't given any consideration to how it affects ANY OTHER PART of the company. So I'm bracing myself, and I look forward to the day I can do what I love for people who aren't crazy.