What do archaeological sites, Nancy Drew, and your workplace have in common? 🔎
Clue: It's related to dirt.
My Intro to Statistics professor often shared this quote from Mark Twain:
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
I imagine he felt it important to remind us that, in our efforts to share data, we could easily misrepresent the truth. The literature heroine Agatha Christie reminds us of the same, in this wisdom from her character Detective Hercule Poirot:
“How fast you go. You arrive at a conclusion much sooner than I would permit myself to do.”
Unless we’re working in a detective agency that bases its investigations on statistics (dystopian and unoriginal, no thank you), these quotables may not seem relevant to work.
But I venture a guess - a calculated guess - that some of you have been in a workplace that dealt more in evidence and suspects than in facts and fairness. There may not have been a killer in your midst, but at least one of your colleagues was well-practiced at character assassination. Sound familiar?
Workplaces like this are akin to being invited to a murder mystery party, except the party is mandatory, you have 40 hours of work to do while *also* looking for clues, and the only party favour to bring home is anxiety. Who’s in?
What archaeological digs, Nancy Drew, and (possibly) your workplace have in common is: The prioritisation of digging up dirt, following clues, and procuring “evidence” that something happened.
It can look like:
Our department head or boss asking for screenshots from our communications with other teams, especially if they’re being slow or delaying a project
A client unhappy with the number on their invoice and calling in for an hour-by-hour breakdown
Pulling together explanations, emails, messages, and other data to explain why we did or didn’t do something - after the fact
These are all examples of spending time at work to defend yourself.
Now, defense is much different than accountability.
Accountability is:
Keeping communication channels open for everyone to see, including if someone is delaying a project
Reporting regularly, fairly, and accurately on our work
Proactively sharing your progress and flagging delays or changes to our work plan
Keeping data, information and other valuable assets accessible to others (think: cc-ing your colleagues on emails)
Accountability can feel stressful, especially if the information we’re sharing isn’t positive (i.e., not great results, or delays).
But accountability is much, much less draining than going back into the historical record of your work days to find data to defend yourself with.
Defensiveness makes for a not-nice workplace, and makes us much less nice to work with, too.
If you’re having to constantly look for clues and gather evidence at work - it’s possible that someone, somewhere, isn’t being accountable. Be aware that it might be you.
One of my non-negotiable Nice Work policies is: No archaelogical digs.
I will not engage in, or support anyone undertaking, a time-intensive, Nancy-Drew-level sleuthing exercise to uncover and present “evidence” to prove a point. Hours and hours can be spent finding emails, screenshots, call notes, and other proof.
Now, we can feasibly make the case that this is worthwhile, especially if it is to competently defend ourselves from accusations of bad behaviour. We can even say it’s our duty to play detective to bring the bad actor into the light.
But at the end of the day, when we do this, it is far too easy to:
Engage in deceptive statistics. We’re human. We won’t always present the evidence or statistics or data that could show someone else’s side.
Work too quickly. Yes, even if it takes hours. By digging around in response to a stressor or accusation, we lose time to get perspective on the problem. Which usually results in way too short, highly defensive emails or “attack memos” that show just how right we are.
And most importantly, it means we often miss the forest for the trees.
We’ve used this phrasing before in our edition on how to see our colleagues as humans. But sometimes malicious behaviour IS malice, and even if all the trees are malicious, there’s still a bigger picture to be seen, which is: What is evidence going to do to change it? Nothing.
That’s why digging up dirt at work just isn’t worth the time.
No matter what the argument is about, whether it’s a work disagreement or a personal tiff, humans will always be tempted to “gather statistics” and present them as facts, because no one likes to be wrong.
Which is why it’s worth it, we think, because we’ll be “right.”
But there’s no prize for being right. Our client still might not pay, if they disagree with our invoice. Our boss might not buy our case for why something didn’t get done on time. And that team that we’re trying to shame in results still may not choose to work any faster. Worse yet, they’ll come at us with THEIR evidence. Emotions take over, careening us towards a derailing of epic proportions.
Defending yourself at work is worthwhile, but not at the cost of your sanity or hope in humanity.
Instead, fight competitiveness with competence. Keep open records and communications lines so it’s always clear what you’re doing. In the case you need to gather real evidence, like proof the client said “Yes, please do that thing,” you have it easily to hand, sparing yourself the stressful journey into your inbox, cursing them all the while worrying if you made it all up.
This kind of approach makes work a lot more like work, and a lot less like an non-optional murder mystery murder mystery party.
It might even be that by refusing to engage, we find ourselves in a nicer workplace, because we become nicer to work with (after all, no one likes being paired with a persnickety Poirot as a project manager). But if not, then at least we know what we’re dealing with, and what to filter for in our next role.
Wishing us all a week without the need to play detective,
Rachel