The Road to Ambivalence

Being the hardest working person at the company was clearly not her goal. To her, that would mean a competition to crown the hardest worker with the very people she needs to collaborate with. She viewed it is as foolish and invited unnecessary drama. That never-ending saga of “I’m better than you” can be draining – for everyone. Every one of us are hard workers she felt. Don’t misunderstand, she likely was the hardest working person at the company if you measure it by things like sheer productivity, results ahead of deadline, fires extinguished or never even started, clients and co-workers that loved her and loved her work. Seemingly, those are the measures that really matter.

As a 10 year veteran at the company she had earned a certain tenure, wage and respect. And the respect was mutual. She loved working for this mid-sized business. Like her, the company owners and most of the employees were Houston natives. It was her first job since graduating college. It had grown to nearly $20 million a year in revenue. They all got along like a happy family.

And then the owner got sick and then the acquisition happened... P.A. – post acquisition was like working for two companies. The mom and pop company she had helped grow, and the larger NY based outfit. Or was it UK based? Doesn’t matter. My part in the telling this story is how she dealt with a work situation that turned toxic.

It had to be painful to have a front row seat at the implosion. Worse to be in it, like she was. The new ownership was basically a group of really smart people, but one of the flaws was they had this drumbeat where all acquisitions had to pay for themselves, and fast. So 25% of top line revenue got sucked off to the mother ship to help pay back the investment. That top line revenue siphoning in itself can be stifling, but the heat was also on to cut expenses too.

The expense cut notifications came as company-wide email edicts from “corporate” on Friday afternoons. Not exactly morale boosters in timing or dissemination.

The company she had grown to love began to make her question a lot of priorities in her life. She had the courage to speak up, and did. Based on the way she spoke to me, I can imagine it was in a very open and professional manner. But she got reprimanded for it. Tried it a different way and got slammed. Not sure at this point how many strikes that was, but it wasn’t strike one.

And then the new results based compensation plan came around. Confusing plan to be sure. The central idea was to have the team focus on what brings in revenue. Which we all can understand that sort of focus. But it was not exactly the customer satisfaction focus that had made this company (now just a business unit) great. There was even a dashboard on the new intranet login, more like a scoreboard, that ranked everyone in terms of profit contribution. Work friends became competitors. And then when things got tight, the internal competition became fierce. Morale bounced off the bottom, always finding new lows.

That was about when her love for this company morphed into hate. Wasn’t overnight, but over many nights. Slow and steady unraveling. The symptoms were growing. The Sunday night dreads. The audible sighs. The shortened fuses. The actual talking to yourself in the shower – oh and it ain’t happy talk. All that begins to collect its toll.

So often we connect our “what-we-do” with “who-we-are” which becomes a big part of our identity. Hard to avoid that. I mean c’mon, there is all that wisdom out there that says “Find and Follow Your Passion” oh and how about the “Love What You Do and You’ll Never Work a Day in Your Life”. About every tenth post on my LinkedIn feed is some similar meme. And so if the “what we do” is going great, so is our self-esteem and sense of self-worth. When it’s not, well, you feel it, sometimes in every cell of your being.

Granted, change is a constant pull in all of our orbits. But it’s not always a matter of just dealing with your cheese getting moved. Sometimes your cheese gets nuked! Microwaved and reconstituted and mixed into something you simply cannot stomach anymore. You didn’t ask for this! It can almost feel like you’ve become a victim. And you know, the thing about being a victim is you often don’t really have a choice in it. Right? Boom! Your car gets smashed and you get hurt. . Poof! The market tanks. . Ouch! A family member or loved one dies.. Bam! The love of your life, fizzles instead of sizzles. . Zap! Your job goes from great! to hate. And yes, you might have some control over it, or if not, can overcome some of these shifts with your great attitude. However, some things are bigger than you alone. The sheer profundity of life is that while becoming a victim may not be your choice, staying a victim IS your choice. I’ll say that again, STAYING a victim IS a choice. And not a good choice by the way.

And her choice became for sure, NOT staying a victim.

Not important how I know this, but there’s this line of thinking in couples therapy that goes basically like this:

1.      If there is love between the two people, then naturally there is a lot of hope in the success of the relationship. That's obvious.

2.      And even if there is hate between the two, there is still hope. Because hate, in its own weird way, is a form of passion. There’s emotion there. Feelings. You care still. Perverse maybe. You care enough.. to hate. Dark, but still, that passion is still there, so there is something to work with to possibly turn the relationship around.

3.      But if there is ambivalence… where the parties simply couldn’t care less. Then admit it, the fire is out and there are no embers or fuel left to rekindle into a flame. A pile of ash simply won’t burn. And if there's no pulse, then clinically speaking, it's when they announce the time of death. Start over. Move on. Starting over could be a reboot with the same person, but you have to figure out how to undo the ambivalence.

That same Love / Hate / Ambivalence thinking can apply to your work world and other relationships as well. Love your job is the best, right? Oh my gosh – nothing better. Hate your job and well, you’ve got issues to deal with. Got Ambivalent? Oh boy, the best scenario there is get in the car to go to work and move the shifter from Park to Disengaged.

From where ever your starting point, it can take time to get to ambivalence. Call it a process. Sort of like going from love to hate. That was certainly a process. And that was the methodical process she went though. She knew she didn’t want to hate or hurt anymore. So that was the first part of her self-love plan -- to not hurt anymore over this. She tried to fix this already, a few times, so she knew she will likely need to get away. To get to Ambivalence.

She bought a small piece of acreage a few hours north of Houston from this older guy and this piece of earth was her get away. The seller of that acreage offered owner financing with a small down payment and made it easy. She gave her 12 year old Honda Accord to her niece (what a cool aunt, huh?) and bought a Toyota Tacoma pickup and began to work the land.

There is something magical about clearing land and turning dirt into fertile soil. And then mixing it with water and seeds and love all under a big beautiful Texas sky. The sunsets in Texas can be these giant canvases where Mother Nature throws all of her left-over paint from the day, high up into the sky where it gels before it all fades to black. And then if you’re lucky enough to be far away from the light pollution then you are under this canopy of stars so thick that the Milky Way looks like some sort of cosmic DNA twisting through the night sky. And it all can be pretty healing. The earth you're on, the stars above. Almost magical.

It’s been over a year since she left the city. Works remote for some outfit now. And works this land of hers. She doesn’t have as many or all the same friends that she used to have. The ones she does have I can tell are all very dear. Her best friend by far, is this black Labrador named Max. An abused rescue dog. Fitting, I thought. She still refers to me as "Mr Goodrich" or sometimes "Sir" for short - which makes me feel old. But to people like her, I am old. And us older folks should learn to admire the respect.

I know all this to be true, because I’m that older guy that sold her the rectangle of land. And listened to her stories as we put the deal together. And watched her go (and grow) from hating her job (when I met her) to that place called Ambivalence.

She had to get there. To that place where it didn’t hurt anymore. To ambivalence. She literally didn’t care anymore, nor wanted to. Sort of like that Phil Collins song, which is probably the ring tone on her phone if her job ever calls “I Don’t Care Any Mo Whoa” (or something like that)…

That’s moving on! I suppose that’s the Beauty of Ambivalence.

It won’t gain anything here to name names, or out her former company. But I can tell you they suffered some big losses here. Customers, employees, profits all likely arrowed down on the dashboard. That hard work ethic of hers didn’t fade however. This land of hers (OK well, she’s still paying on it, but mostly hers) is looking great! Taken a rough piece of Texas, overgrown with thorns and rocks and made it her own. Parts of her land have become a real fertile place.

I’m no A&M grad so my measure of soil fertility is this: if you can eat an apple or maybe seeded grapes and spit out the seeds, and crops grow from it, you’ve got a good place of earth there. 

And she will likely profit handsomely when she sells half of it and keep the other half – which she shared as her exit strategy. And she’ll return to the city stronger, smarter, and seemingly healed.

It was her idea to publish this story. It might help someone else "deal" she felt. So maybe the takeaway from this story is simply... From time to time take the temperature of your customers, employees, loved ones, as well as your own temperature and see where it registers on the Love / Hate / Ambivalence scale. And if it's not where it needs to be, well, do something worthy about it.