Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
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Beware Delusions in Good Times and Bad
(Originally published in Computerworld USA and
on CIO.com)
With gloom descending on the global economy, it seems clear
that we in IT will not be spared from the suffering of the financial meltdown.
If history is any guide, we'll be in the vanguard of corporate cuts. When things
get tough, businesses rarely invest in efficiency, expansion or strategic
change. Instead, they cut contractors, projects and employees willy-nilly to
husband cash and shore up short-term balance sheets.
While these times can be disturbing and scary, they also offer
a good opportunity for reflection, and a chance to review our assumptions about
our world, our work and how they all fit together. So while the storm is howling
outside, maybe we should take a pipe cleaner to our brains.
Good times may lead us to some delusional thinking that leaves
us vulnerable to mental and financial pain when the party's over. The first
fallacy that many of us buy into during good times is that we're all geniuses.
We become convinced that because things are going well, we actually know what
we're doing. The world looks great, so we must be smart, right? And if we're
intelligent and effective, then we deserve credit for all the success. We are
masters of the universe. We are the Promethean creators of technology, which
begets value and wealth. If the stock of our company goes up, it must be the
result of our beneficial actions.
And during good times, this is all fine. But it is delusional.
As soon as things begin to go badly, we're not as eager to
accept the blame as we were to take the credit. We look for extenuating
circumstances, constraints beyond our control, systemic failures or any other
excuses that might shield us from the harsh judgment of reality.
The truth is that none of us is in complete control of either
our successes or our failures. We live in an interdependent world and work in
interdependent offices. Few of us are either geniuses or idiots. Most of us are
ordinary mortals trying to do our best in the organizations in which we've
landed. Likewise, stock prices are not the omniscient wisdom of the universe
expressed in numeric form. They are the result of the machinations of millions
of global gamblers.
The problem with believing in our own power is that when it's
revealed to be an illusion, we suffer shame and humiliation. Worse, we can
succumb to the opposite delusion: that we are completely powerless.
While the first myth leads to mental anguish, the second can
lead to financial ruin. When our salaries go up, we tend to believe that
personal income is a function of our value to the company. We believe that our
incomes are somehow a measure of our moral or financial virtue. And then we
build a lifestyle that assumes that our virtue will never fail us. We take out
mortgages, grow accustomed to luxuries. We think our companies pay us more
because we're loved and respected.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with being loved and
respected. And having a reasonable degree of self esteem is no vice. But to
believe that money is an accurate measure of one's value is a dangerous idea. We
live in a market economy, and what we're paid is largely the result of supply,
demand and regulation.
If in this downturn many of us are forced out of good-paying
jobs and into jobs that pay less, does that mean that we're personal failures?
Or does it just mean that the forces of supply and demand for our labors have
changed? How many of us are now hostage to mortgage debt, car loans and credit
cards that we took on in the belief that incomes and value would only rise?
Through the ups and downs of a career, it's best to stay
firmly in touch with hard reality, even if it means giving up some of our
pleasant illusions conjured during times of good fortune.
© Copyright 2008 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, MA, 01701. Reprinted by permission of
Computerworld. All Rights Reserved.
