Week 21: The Circus

Hi everybody! It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? I suppose this “Week XX” naming convention is becoming obsolete – though I’ll continue to use it nonetheless. Over the past few months I’ve been very busy with a myriad of new little projects to work on at the mine and all of them are super exciting! Recently, I had the opportunity to utilize my coding skills I acquired in university to help with a data collection project. One of my biggest motivators is when I’m able to work on tasks that make use of a niche skill I posses – In those instances, I tend to feel challenged and most helpful. Luckily for me, as time goes on I’m finding more ways to create opportunities where I can utilize these skills. I’ve learned that in order for me to be the most useful employee I can be, it is ultimately my responsibility to search for places where I can be most useful. Yes, I have supervisors who are responsible for & oversee what I do in a general sense – though relying on them to know what I enjoy doing (or even to know where I can apply my skillset) is just inefficient. It is easier for all of us if I take the initiative to identify these tasks myself.

This week’s topic is a complicated one. I’m actually a bit scared to be posting about it. I’ve considered how writing about it may seem inappropriate or sacrilege for what is supposed to be a blog about my career; However, this topic has been prevalent in a lot of situations I’ve been in at work. Furthermore, I figured it would be helpful to write it all out and share my thoughts. Recently, I’ve been paying attention to decision-making, whether it be decisions made by my supervisors or decisions made by upper management. My reason for doing this is simple: if one day I want to be trusted to make big decisions and have a great impact in the place I work – if I want to make it to “The Room Where it Happens” – I need to understand the logic behind decisions that are being made by those who are currently privy to The Room. This in and of itself is a challenge as I do not fully understand a lot of aspects of mining or business, and as such I may find it difficult to understand some decisions – but I hope that by the effort of trying, I can begin to understand more than I did before. However, not long into this quest of understanding decisions, I found my first major challenge: I encountered “The Circus”.

Here’s what happened: after being presented with all of the facts regarding a specific issue (that I believe I have a good understanding of, since it is something I work on personally), I did not agree with a decision that was made by somebody in The Room that informed how we were to deal with the issue. Let’s call this person “X”. The decision X made didn’t seem logical and I would have decided differently if I were in his position. I was still committed to the pursuit of understanding decisions, so I figured the best course of action would be to ask my supervisors about why they think X made the decision he did, instead of how I thought it should be. After all, I must have been missing something – X is profoundly knowledgeable and is beyond qualified to make these decisions, so there must have been something more nuanced and less obvious that I did not understand. After some supervisor input, I was able to reduce it to two contributing factors that I hadn’t considered previously. One helped clarify X’s decision, but the other I disagreed with – and ultimately, I decided that I still wouldn’t have made the decision that X made.

Let’s take a moment to clarify where X and I didn’t agree. The decision I would have made was proven to save the mine money and avoid wasting time on something that wasn’t working out. I knew this project wasn’t working out because I was one of the people working on it. X also knew this to be true. We were both presented with the same facts. Essentially, my view was that it would be in the mine’s best interest (fiscally) to “abandon ship” on a particular project. Yet, X chose to not “abandon ship”. At first, I thought that X was making the wrong decision because he didn’t actually understand the facts; Perhaps he didn’t trust nor believe us when we claimed that it wasn’t working out. However, we were the ones working on it and X was not – so it upset me to think that he believed that he knew more than us about the problem. With more time, I figured that there had to be something else, because again – X is smart. He knows to trust the experts on decisions like this. He’s trusted me on other things before. So, I chalked it up to being purely an emotional decision. A decision that was beyond facts, one that was informed by the emotions of X and those around him. Particularly, it looked bad on X to abandon ship. There is a lot of pressure on X right now, and the last thing he wants is to broadcast a failure like this. I even went as far as to think that X was upset about the reality of the situation and wanted to send a message by having us work on it more – perhaps in an effort to deflect the blame onto us. Of course, this did not sit well with me – I reckon that it wouldn’t sit well with anybody.

It wasn’t until I spoke to my dad about the issue when I figured out exactly why X made the decision he did. Ultimately, X did end up “abandoning ship” like I thought he should, albeit a few months later. My dad supposes that this was deliberate and calculated (because he would have done the same thing) – waiting to “abandon ship” was more convenient (fiscally) and the optics of the situation appeared better for the company, and it didn’t cost much. If my dad is correct (which we will never know), then that means X always knew about the fiscal disadvantages of not abandoning ship sooner, he knew everything that I did – but he optimized the outcome of the situation while both considering the facts and the optics. As such, I maintain that it was an emotional decision – perhaps a better word for it is a political decision – but I still assert that the consideration of optics is based on emotions (although I don’t think my Dad agrees). However, what talking to my dad actually made me realize is that emotional decisions shouldn’t be automatically written-off as detrimental or uninformed. In fact, they are necessary. Perhaps a lot of bad decisions are made because of emotions – but X is dealing with the emotions of others, too. Making emotional decisions is unavoidable because we are emotional beings. It is impossible to separate ourselves from that. My emotions inform a lot of my own decisions even if I attempt to not let them. Catering to the emotions of others is how one survives in a workplace and in society as a whole. I respect my dad’s decision to eat fish-jerky because it makes him happy even though I really, really hate when he does that because it smells awful. I do this because his enjoyment of eating fish jerky outweighs the inconvenience of the smell, to me. Those are emotions. Much the same way, I now respect X’s decision to not “abandon ship” earlier because even though it wasn’t the completely logical and factual decision, it was still the right decision for the company.

A workplace is effectively a tiny society, and under-stating the roles that drama, politics, and performance play in such a society is improvident. In fact, you cannot have a society without these components. A coworker of mine has named this aspect of the institution “The Circus”. At first, I didn’t really agree with his nomenclature because I felt it to be degrading towards the people who work in the organization – perhaps he was suggesting that everyone was a clown. Though after some thought, I have found a broader definition of “The Circus” that I have come to agree with. At some point, every individual will encounter a situation where they find themselves the ringleader, a performer, or perhaps an observer – sometimes they are simultaneously all three. These roles are necessary in a workplace. Sure, these aspects of a workplace are considered unprofessional, but it is tremendously difficult for a society to coalesce & function in ways that are always professional. Trying to coordinate a meeting with 5 people is often difficult – so it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that policing the behaviours and emotional reactions of 500 people is impossible. Sometimes it’s safer for a ringleader to make a less logical decision if it appeases the observers rather than making a logical decision that upsets them. We are emotional beings, which isn’t a bad thing – workplaces even exploit the emotional characteristics of their employees to foster a more productive environment. Workplaces encourage employees to be passionate about what they do and to take pride in their work. Workplaces are competitive environments wherein your success in this competition (ie. your seniority and wage) dictates your quality of life both inside and outside of work. How is it reasonable to expect that these premises (which are being applied to people, not robots) wouldn’t lead to a political and dramatic society? Moreover, the stakeholders investing in this company inform their money-moving decisions based on their own emotions – and we, as a company, rely on their investments. We must cater to emotions, plain and simple. Knowing how to play the game – how to participate in “The Circus” – is necessary to succeed as a company, and as an individual within it. The manifestations of “The Circus” don’t always appear to make sense (whether it be as decisions, policies, political structures, or otherwise), and I will continue to find myself in disagreement with a lot of them – but at the very least, I feel better knowing that I understand.

Before this realization and talking to my dad, I was left stewing about how frustrating it is that people make emotional decisions – I started noticing more emotional decisions that I didn’t agree with. This also upset me because I felt as though I couldn’t afford to make emotional decisions, as people wouldn’t understand or take me seriously if I did (because I’m younger than them, less experienced, a woman, etc). For a little while I asserted that everything wrong with our mine was the result of somebody’s emotional decision. However, my frustration towards the existence of emotional decisions is in and of itself an emotional reaction (which informs my own emotional decisions, because I am not immune). If everybody made decisions based on facts and logic (and if everybody else reacted to these decisions based on facts and logic) then things would certainly be better and more efficient. However, that is not reality; In fact, there are some situations when emotional decisions are necessary. A situation may have facts that are unknowable, and we must base our decisions on probabilities and risk. In these situations, people may disagree on where to draw the line in terms of betting on possibilities and taking risks. That’s a fundamental and unalterable emotional difference. Alternatively, a group of people may all have the same facts about an issue but have a fundamental and unalterable disagreement within their respective priorities which ultimately inform the decision (this could be for many valid reasons), but this disagreement is also emotional. Again, emotional decisions are sometimes necessary.

So, what have I learned so far?

• “The Circus” – although often frustrating – is an inherent institution of the workplace. A workplace is a society and will always have an emotional component to it that we cannot ignore.
• The facts of a situation – although important – do not suffice on their own to inform what is accepted as good decisions. There will always be emotional reactions from observers that good ringleaders and performers must consider (within reason).
• In situations where facts are unknowable or priorities don’t align, emotional decisions are necessary.
• I shouldn’t suppose that I understand the best decision just because I know all of the facts. While it is necessary to have all of the facts to make the best decision, the best decision also considers the priorities of “The Circus”.

I’ll admit – I do not understand “The Circus”. I do not know who I should consider as ringleaders, performers, or observers in a given situation. This is why I am not yet trusted to make the decisions that X makes, and why I am not yet in “The Room Where it Happens”. My goal is to understand how and why decisions are made around here so that one day I can make decisions, too. I want this mine to be as efficient and productive as possible, and I want the people I care about to not feel under pressure and stressed out by “The Circus”. There is a lot more to say about “The Circus” and perhaps from here on out it will be a common theme in these blogs (much like “The Room” is), but I’m afraid this post has gotten far too long and my brain has turned into soup. At the very least, I feel like I have made a lot of progress in understanding decisions and perhaps I’ve learned to be a bit more introspective about the decisions I disagree with, because there’s more to them than facts. Here’s to joining “The Circus”.

(February 22nd, 2021)