On the job

Have you ever had the type of job where you lost track of reality?
Not in an ‘constantly- hallucinating’ kind of way, but in a way where you’re so focused on your own goings-on that you forget the bigger picture?

I have (obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this blog).

My job mainly consists of (as I subtly put it) making money for my boss. Which I do by winning deals, as a bidmanager. Or tendermanager. Or dealmaker. Whatever title works for you. And the deals that I win tend to be either result-based or people-based deals with public entities. Aka. I make sure that we’re allowed to do projects or place people within the companies that we do business with. Yawn. I know.

The thing is – my job works with big numbers. They’re big deals, with big revenue, big capacity requests, huge demands and humongous effort-to-win. Which makes them both challenging and awesome (to win). BUT. AND IT’S A BIG BUT – They’re VERY separate from the day-to-day-lives of the colleagues of my 20k+ worldwide company.

They don’t see what I do. They don’t feel what I win or lose. They don’t know what I achieve, or fuck up or whateverthefuckIdowithmytime. UNTIL. UNTIL it hits them.
Which is a very thin line of understanding. You (or at least I) often lose track of what effects my work ACTUALLY has in the heat of the moment.

It works like that with every job. At McDonalds, for instance, my interaction with a customer ended the moment I handed them their food. My targets were met, my script was done, my mission completed. But that’s only when things started for them. They still had to see, eat and judge their orders. Yet, I never really considered that part of their experience. Wasn’t my job.
My job at a clothes store? I checked out after the customer interaction. Advising them on their choices. Ringing up their purchases. Done. But that’s when their lives continued. Fitting clothes at home, actually wearing them, all that stuff.

Today I was confronted (or challenged, to put it positively) to look beyond. In my own part-of-the-process I was responsible for writing a bid. A bid that included a person. Well, multiple (12) people actually, which were part of the team we were offering to a client. And in my silo-of-peace which is our bid, I only recognised these people as input-items in a text I was writing. Until one of them accepted a different offer for a different project.

Suddenly I was confronted with an actual human being who made an actual choice who took him to an actual place which was beyond my scope. And my world crumbled.

The thing is – we very much are eager to forget that our actions, choices and thinking are only of import to the things we do for ourselves. And just as this real life human being choosing something different was an inconvenience to me, my choices might be the same for others. But I didn’t realize, because of the routine-that-is-work.

But every choice I make reflects on ALL the people that either get (or don’t get) a new job because of me. Get new opportunities because of me (or have them taken away). It determines the path of the company and MANY of the people within it. And all I register is that I need to write 2 A4s of text to win a bid that is just a bid to me. It’s insane. Stupid. And irresponsible to think that my only effect on this world is my direct environment. Because everything I do causes its ripples in my company.

And everything we do in life, causes ripples for those around us,

If only we were more aware of the profound effects we can have on the world.
We’d live in a better one.