Steve Jones wrote an editorial yesterday called The Poor Soul. It talked about being thrown into a responsibility one didn't have experience at and Steve's take was, "Make sure your resume is ready if the worst happens, but then dive in and get the job done." No pouting, no crying, no whining. Why not? Because none of that does any good. In response to some comments, I posted a few things that I have learned over the years:
- If I depend on my organization to take care of my technical skill set and level of competence and they don't and then later they decide they don't need me, it is not the organization that will suffer, it is me and my family.
- Therefore, I will not depend on the organization to determine my technical skill set and level of competence. I am responsible for it.
- If I am asked to do something I'm not capable of doing *right now* I will communicate the truth about my abilities and knowledge in order to set expectations. While this may do little good in the long run from a "dealing with the organization" perspective, it's important to realize that my manager and my manager's manager are people and my poor performance, regardless of the reason, will put them in the sling, too. If they know what they're asking is beyond my ability at the present time, they have the information they need to try and communicate upward to set expectations as well as prepare contingency plans. This is what I would want a worker to do for me. Therefore, I should do it.
- If I am asked to do something I'm not capable of doing *right now* and I'm willing to do it, then I need to plunge head first into it, because dragging my feet doesn't do any good. Waiting for the organization to come around doesn't, either. See the first two realizations.
- If I am asked to do something I don't want to do, I had better be in a position to just walk away, or I'm going to do it. Therefore, just like with keeping my skills and competence up, I need to set myself up where walking away is a viable option.
The bottom line is you are responsible for you. You can try and pass that responsibility on to your organization, but I don't see many organizations actually accepting that responsibility. If the organization doesn't accept the responsibility and neither do you, then that means no one is responsible. That means your growth and development is haphazard and uncertain at best and non-existent at worst. And if you don't develop and grow and the organization decides to let you go, you'll be the one paying the price. So while we can complain about the fact that our organization may not do this or that for us, the fact of the matter is we cannot depend on our organizations to take care of us. That's on our shoulders.