View from the Trenches

Like many people, I started life at the bottom of the business food chain.  My first job was as a dish washer.  I subsequently worked as a stock boy, janitor, shoe salesman, and even a Pinkerton security guard.  Eventually, I went to college and got a degree. This allowed me to get more illustrious jobs like computer salesman and systems engineer.

All these jobs have one thing in common -- the view to the top is hazy at best.  In the trenches, we usually receive our marching orders and we carry them out.  In the modern professional environment, we are expected to use our heads to creatively carry them out, but carry them out we must.  How many times have I said "what idiot came up with this plan?"  Far too many.  I'd often wonder what it took to become a leader because it didn't seem to have anything to do with brains.

Then, one day I became the leader.  "I" was the idiot making the stupid decisions.  Here's the thing: the view from the top is always different.  At first, this troubled me.  I decided I'd try to fix the problem.  So, I called all my employees into a room and proceeded to tell them everything they didn't know.  I took them through financial statements.  I explained about supplier negotiations.  I shared my vision for how the company needed to transform because of our changing market.

All this "stuff" that was clear and obvious to me was mostly lost on them.  Don't get me wrong.  They really appreciated that I'd shared all the details with them.  I believe it built a lot of trust and maybe my idiot index dropped a few notches.  Ultimately, only a few people cared enough about the things I needed to deal with to expend the effort to integrate the information I shared into their thinking about their own job.  Frankly, I did a lousy job of making the connections for them.

Now for the really strange bit.  I always assumed that when I went back into the trenches, it would be different.  Having been to command central before, I would have a new appreciation for all the "stuff" that leaders need to deal with that the rest of us don't.  I thought that somehow, I would be able to magically see through the fog and understand my place in the organization so much better.  HA!

The reality is much the same.  The reason is much the same.  Even if the leadership decided they wanted to spend the time and energy to share everything that makes up their perspective with us, we are too busy doing our job here in the trenches to take it all in.  They spend all their hours every day immersed in things that are at best tangentially relevant to our jobs.  These "things" shape their view of the world.  It is a different view than the one we have in the trenches.

What I learned during my time at the top is that the best you can hope for is trust.  If you work openly and honestly with people and take every opportunity to demonstrate that you really care about them, they will eventually learn to trust you.  They may still think you're an idiot sometimes, but they'll know you're an idiot they can depend on.  For those of us in the trenches, remember not to just peer longingly into the haze.  We are fortunate to have a leadership team willing and happy to explain what they know.  Just ask.