Grace

Years ago, as a baby manager, I pitched a fit because I had to deal with a situation the previous manager had left behind. I felt very self-assured in my position on the matter, which was that a good manager wouldn’t leave a problem unaddressed. In fact, it made no sense to me that people were saying they missed the previous manager. How could they? These problems had been left behind.

Then I became someone my boss was willing to toss into situations where things weren’t great and just needed some attention. And then someone who had enough of a profile that I’d sometimes stick around somewhere long enough to stabilize things then have another opportunity to move on to. Some things ended up being left undone. I’d done my best, it often felt like there wasn’t a ton of appreciation for what I’d managed to accomplish, but things were left undone.

Managers have a lot of privilege and a lot of power, so I’m not here to be all “misery me for the poor managers.”

I just had a moment today where it was my turn to take the baton on some unfinished business and I realized it’s the first time in a while that I’ve had the privilege of being the stranger riding into town, and into the middle of whatever story has been playing out. And I also realized my first reaction this time — years and years after indulging in some very judgey, less than gracious umbrage — was one of understanding. Yay growth.

Everyone only has so much new leader energy they can bring to a new thing. The experienced ones keep some back, the not-so-great ones sort of punch themselves out in the early rounds. As you get comfortable with a team and get things into the right place, you get comfortable with your own tradeoffs. Things get out of true and drift a little, but not every worn bearing needs to be replaced right away.

Because you can

I had an item for today’s post I decided wasn’t quite ready. Using org-mode to blog, I would have done a quick org-refile to move the heading into a drafts section where I can work on it later. But I’m writing in Markdown so that was off the table. I just made a file called drafts.md and committed it, then added the heading to it for later with good ol’ fashioned kill/yank.

But I did briefly think “oh, see … good reason to go back to org-mode for blogging.”

Except it’s not. It’s a terrible reason.