News Flash

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

Okay, thats old news -- but its still relevant. In this case, the observation comes from talking with my wife as we walked through a surprisingly blustery April day. She'd gotten a very unpleasant surprise yesterday, when a dull ache in her jaw turned into a surprise visit to an endodontist for a root canal. The procedure went well, and she's glad she went, but she admitted that part of the post-experience visit was a sudden vigor to floss again. Like most people, she would get religion about that immediately before going for a dental visit, and immediately after, and then it would trail off until the next time. Now, she says, she really wants to be consistant, but she knows that she's going to fall, again, because she always does. I told her that my experience has been that when you fall, however you do, for however long you do, just accept it, do what you can to fix it, and move on. Put mechanisms in place to help you remember next time, and when you fall again, if you do, just do it again. Like my bathroom cabinet note about every day being a chance to get it right, put a note on the mirror about flossing -- or whatever it is you want to focus on.

I told her that for years my attitude was that if things went wrong, I was doing the best I could (which of course wasn't true), so SORRY! It effectively absolved me of blame. It took me a very long time to realize that I could accept the blame without feeling that I was therefore worthless and incompetent, and oh by the way, therefore unable to do anything about it, and therfore didn't HAVE to do anything. I could always do something -- maybe not enough, but something, and maybe just a little more each day or each week. But it all started with accepting that I was going to fail, and figuring out some way to recover from it and move on. In a way it was like my belief in organizational processes -- that they have to assume that people are going to fail, that there are things that they just will not want to do, and will actively go out of their way to avoid doing (while still acknowledging that they should do it, and will...real soon now). The processes have to account for that, and steer them back to, if not the path of righteousness, at least the path of 'good enough'. Because thats the area where you want to be. Not perfect, nice as that would be -- but good enough.

Not that thats ever good enough for auditors, of course.

And thats my insight for today. The choir will now sing.....