Page 224 - Make Work Great

You . . . as the Defi ner

I don’t see this the same way. I need your help in fi nding some middle
ground. I want you to have the chance to test this out on your own, but
obviously we can’t have you simply ignoring the expectations set for
you and your peers. Please help me here.” Don’t just say it; mean it.

Don’t Be a Victim
If you’re in the business of building new cultures, you’re going to get
plenty of invitations to be a victim.
You’ve already passed on the fi rst such opportunity. You could
have chosen to be a victim of “the way things have always been
done.” Having gotten through this book, you deserve kudos for mak-
ing a different choice. But rest assured there will be others suggesting

that you play a victim role: the highly influential manager who feels
threatened by your new level of output; the diffi cult employee who
refuses to adopt the new patterns you request; and the heavyweight
customer who insists on vaguely defi ned, ever-changing output from
you. Each of these people is going to tempt you to become a victim
again and again. They will encourage you to sit down, shut up, and
stop trying.
It’s all too big to really change it. Why bother making the effort?
Take care to choose your mental frameworks for your actions
based on reality, not on prewritten scripts. If you’ve been experi-
menting with an approach that doesn’t seem to be working, if your
priorities have changed, or if a new environment mandates that you
take different action, a change in your strategy may be the intelligent
move. If your decision is a rational one, if you’ve learned from your
experiment and decided to make a change, then this is not being a vic-
tim because you’re not playing “loser” to another person’s “winner.”
On the other hand, if what you’re attempting continues to make sense
in the context of your goals and ethics and the requirements of the
broader situation, then the abandonment of those efforts because you
“just can’t win” is scarcely in anyone’s best interest. Framing yourself
as the victim of a person or precedent that is more assertive, louder,
or more threatening than you demoralizes those around you. Perhaps
more importantly, it fails to showcase the inherent intelligent func-

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