The Zone of Expendability?

In Don Norman's words, "If someone doesn't hate your product, it's probably mediocre." If playing it safe today is considered a risk in business, what about in a job? If all managers like you, are you safer than if some think you're amazing while others think you're the poster child for Bad Hiring Decisions?

My little trip back to Sun was a perfect reminder of this... during the time I was there as an employee, one manager would give me an award while another would dig up dirt for my next performance review. Marketing gave me a bonus (for having a tech article published in a major trade magazine) while another department gave me a reprimand for not getting all the proper approvals. One boss went out of her way to use the downturn as an excuse to give me the one job she knew I hated, while another used his remaining time to give me a ridiculously large salary increase. The thing is, through all of this... I was always the same person. In a single year, I went from best thing since canned beer to best reason for having a Prompt Exit Plan (otherwise known as the, "We're almost certainly going to fire you unless you do this [insert thing they know you won't do], but we'll give you the chance to leave quietly if you go now...].

I'm rightly and frequently criticized for celebrating the trouble-maker... for making the rule-breaker into some kind of hero. But I agree that just because one challenges the status quo does NOT mean they're helping. And just because one has bold, risky ideas doesn't mean those ideas are good. Sometimes a rule-breaker, non-team-playing upstart is simply... a pain in the ass. But too many managers appear too threatened to figure out whether their trouble-maker is the one person who can really push things forward, or the one who simply thrives on being disruptive.

There are no guarantees, of course. Especially now. But while in the past the safest move was to keep your head down and stay off any radars... being a good little trooper... that's no longer any more likely to help you keep your job. If you're on nobody's radar, you've probably got nobody defending you like a tiger to their boss. In either case, the freedom to push for what you believe in, and to challenge the status quo is a lot more stimulating than deciding to just not care.

If everyone is a lot more expendable today, and we ALL are "short-timers" whether we know it or not, we might as well act like short-timers by taking the risks we were too afraid to make before. It probably won't make us any less at risk, and today... it might even make us safer.

[Footnote: this seems to be true for students as well... like mother like daughter I suppose, but Skyler's report cards always made me smile when it came to the little extra notes each teacher attached to the grade. It was amazing how a single person--Skyler--could simultaneously be "a joy to have in class!" an "inspiration" and "disrupts the class" and "disrespectful", all in a single semester. Again, this is not the strategy I'd ever recommend, especially for a child who wants into a great college, but this kid has other plans for the world, and I can't say I'm not secretly delighted. Life... is just too darn short not to speak up.]