Everything Looks Like a Failure When You Are in the Middle

I have a friend who jokes that he’s going to quit his executive position and take a job as a school bus driver.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “That job would be so much more straightforward. At 6:15 a.m., I get in the bus. I know exactly where all the stops are, which kids to pick up at what time. Then I drop them all at the school before the bell rings. I go from A to B to C.” He is drawing a line in the air as he speaks, poking at each of the invisible points on his bus route. “I would come home at the end of the day feeling like I actually accomplished something.”

This, as opposed to being in management during the Year of our Lord, A.D. 2009, where each new day is a mystery meal of ambiguity, uncertainty and resistance, seasoned with a healthy spray of alarming revelations. So much is outside of your control, and so little is in your favor, it seems.

Like my friend, I hardly ever feel a sense of accomplishment at work any more. There is a constant blur of new projects, deals, initiatives, teams, and growth strategies coming my way. Some are of my own doing. Others are urgent priorities that simply must be addressed if we want to keep our business competitive, relevant and profitable.

It never ends. I can’t remember the last time that I actually finished something. More often, it feels like I am somewhere lost in the middle, in the no-man’s land of a once- familiar business territory, and I can’t quite see over to the other side, where it’s all supposed to end.

To an outsider, I imagine it would look as if I was standing in the midst of a whirling, chaotic sandstorm: dust and papers flying everywhere, the wind is howling, people flying past me, bumping into things, distractions, delays, problems. When all I really wanted is to lead the team to a big victory – a chance to step up to the top pedestal at the medal ceremony, where the pretty girl carrying the flowers reaches up to congratulate me, placing the gold medal around my neck, while the old man with the big glasses and foreign accent announces my name to a wildly cheering crowd.

The thing is, it’s so easy and fun to get a new initiative started, when there is a rallying cry of excitement, a compelling vision has been cast and unlimited potential looms large ahead. But soon enough the hard work begins, and within a couple of weeks the enthusiastic chatter begins to die down as you enter the great unknown. Days and weeks can go by without seeing anything that looks even remotely like success or accomplishment. Worse, things can very likely take an ugly turn in the other direction. The team starts complaining. People are disagreeing. Performance is stagnating. The original assumptions are not proving out to be true. Your leadership is in question. The energy has left the room.

Welcome to the middle.

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I caught an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago talking about the huge computer network company, Cisco Systems. The CEO, John Chambers, has created a maze of dozens of internal Operating Committees, Councils, and Boards of Directors made up of senior managers, with the hope that these teams will generate multiple new business initiatives. But to many outsiders Cisco Systems’ entire management structure is starting to look like a jumbled mess.

The theory goes that all of these ad-hoc, cross-functional teams will allow the company to creatively focus on evaluating many more new opportunities than would be possible in a typical command-and-control hierarchy. And, yes, just like in my own company, these team assignments require you to contribute above and beyond your regular job responsibilities. Some senior managers say they are spending up to 30% of their time on these new teams.

Critics argue that Mr. Chambers has created chaos, an unfocused hodgepodge of overwhelmed managers who now have a complicated system they must navigate when responding to immediate challenges. But Chambers counters that this discomfort is the new normal. He says these new teams will change how managers view potential problems and opportunities. He wants everyone to rethink what it means to come to work.

Right now, the jury is still out if this is the right move. But what caught my attention in this article was an observation made by the famous Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. “Cisco is in the middle of something that isn’t yet completed,” she said. “Everything can look like a failure in the middle.”

Well. That explains a lot.

Professor Kanter’s comment reminds me of a quote from another famous professor from several hundred years ago – one that was actually recorded in the bible, in Phillipians 1:6. The Apostle Paul was trying to encourage his friends who were in the middle of a mess with a start-up venture called The Church. “I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ,” he told them. In other words, Paul says our whole existence is really just a work in progress. We are always in the middle. Life requires some faith to see it through to the end. And the only way out is through.

So it is with our little situations at work. Sometimes when we are in the middle, and it seems as if things are not going so well, the only thing left to hang on to is faith – faith that God is with you and the project will pan out, that you are on the right path, or that it will eventually be revealed. Faith that somehow, some way, there will be an end result, even if it is not what you expected in the beginning.

What feels like a failure may not be so bad after all. Take heart. It’s just that you’re in the middle – of your project, your work, your life. You’re not done yet.  Soon enough, you will be complete.