The Ol' Yeller Maneuver (Managing Impossible Projects, Part 6 of 6)

The following series is adapted from a keynote I delivered at the Washington, DC, chapter of the Project Management Institute back in August. Parts also come from my book Creative Project Management (with Ted Leemann), published by McGraw-Hill. 

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Earlier, we discussed the story of the infamous automated baggage handling system at Denver International Airport (DIA), which burned through $250 million before being abandoned as unworkable.

There’s nothing inherently impossible about the concept of an automated baggage handling system, though obviously the implementation is tougher than it appears. No, this is the kind of project in which impossibility is situational: a function of the constraints. While we’ve focused on the Triple Constraints because of their universal application in project management, individual projects have other constraints as well.

The airlines themselves, oddly, had little initial involvement in the airport planning. This gave them substantial leverage later in the process. “If you build it, they will come” often carries a hefty price tag. In order to keep its costs down, United Airlines needed the baggage transfer system to take no longer than 45 minutes to route luggage among its flights.

In 1992, the automated baggage handling system was shoehorned into existing construction in what amounted to a “Hail Mary” play. In terms of project scope, the engineering involved amounted to a great leap forward from third-generation to sixth-generation technology.

Performance, obviously, was the project driver, with budget unavoidably the weak constraint. Significant cost and schedule overruns were guaranteed, and to a large extent acceptable — as long as performance goals were achieved.

So far, we have a very challenging project, but there’s no reason for a project manager to propose killing it. It’s not operationally impossible, and the value of closing the gap justifies a very high level of effort.

The Second Frog

The BAE project team officially recognized these key risks:

• Very large scale of the project. 
• Enormous complexity. 
• Newness of the technology. 
• Large number of entities to be served by the system. 
• The high degree of technical and project definition uncertainty. 

The most important risk, however, was not mentioned: the complex stakeholder environment. The initial project was simply to serve United. DIA management expanded the contract to cover all terminals. DIA rejected the BAE proposal to build a 50,000 square foot prototype. Scheduling issues with other construction activities caused huge conflict.

There’s the old joke about the two frogs who fell into pots of water. One pot had hot water, and the frog immediately jumped in. The other pot was warming slowly, so the other frog felt no urgency about escaping until it was too late.

BAE was the second frog.

Politically Impossible

Because the project was not impossible from an engineering perspective, the fact that it became operationally impossible because of the constraints of the stakeholder environment tended to escape notice until it’s too late.

On the other hand, political problems aren’t exactly unheard of. Project managers are supposed to perform a stakeholder analysis. This isn’t just about figuring out your customers — it’s about analyzing the political landscape.

The earlier we identify a risk or problem, the more options are available. If you accompany the sales team when bidding on a job, don’t confine yourself to a study of the technical issues. As project manager, you’re going to have to spend your days dealing with the people, and you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. If you detect political dangers, they need to be part of your risk analysis for the job. This need to affect pricing and schedule, not just for your sake as project manager, but for the sake of the entire job.

If you get into the job and find that these issues are getting out of control, you likely don’t have the power to get out of the problem by yourself. You need allies, and you need them to figure out the problem for themselves. Most project managers see reporting (no matter how necessary) as something that takes time away from doing the work. Reporting, however, is a strategic tool to lay the information groundwork with your stakeholder community to bring them toward the correct understanding of the real situation.

The Ol' Yeller Maneuver

The best way to kill a project is to help the key stakeholders and decision makers reach the conclusion on their own, rather than you telling them. Remember that “operationally impossible” means you can’t figure out an answer. Leave open the possibility that someone else might have an answer you’ve missed. Sometimes they do have an answer for you. And if they don’t, they’re more likely to agree with your assessment.

Sometimes canceling a project is peaceful, sometimes bloody. This one ended with mutual lawsuits. That’s a powerful argument for acting early when the project is likely to be operationally impossible.

So let’s wrap up. A project is operationally impossible if you can’t do it within the stated constraints. There might be too little time, insufficient or wrong resources, or unrealistic or wrong performance criteria.

Sometimes the constraints can be changed, be made more flexible, or in some cases ignored altogether. If the constraints can’t be changed, perhaps you can work around them or accomplish the project in spite of its barriers. 

If the project’s still impossible — well, earlier I mentioned the idea of an American Movie Classics film festival of great project management movies. Apollo 13 is one candidate…but another is Ol’ Yeller. Sometimes a project manager’s job is to kill his own dog.

If the dog won’t hunt, and can’t be killed, the last solution is self-preservation. While captains are supposed to go down with their ships, we project managers are better off living to fight another day. 

The Three Envelopes

There’s the old joke about the outgoing project manager who left three numbered envelopes in a drawer, and told his successor that those envelopes contained the answers to the next three crises the project would face.

Inside the first envelope was a note that read, “Blame your predecessor.” The new person often has flexibility denied to the person previously holding the bag. You may have better luck challenging project assumptions and constraints.

Inside the second envelope, the note read, “Reorganize the department,” because — let’s face it — shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic is a long, noble tradition.

And in the third envelope, the note read, “Prepare three envelopes.” If in the final analysis the project really is impossible, it’s time to get while the getting is still good.

And that’s how to manage an impossible project.

The End.

Understanding Politics (Office and Otherwise)

“Politics, n.  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”

-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906 -

Take this test to see if you have office politics in your organization.

        1) Count the employees.

        2)  Does the number exceed 3?

        3)  If the answer to #2 is “Yes,” you definitely have office politics.

Within this concept of politics you can play many different ways for many different goals.  Some tactics are unethical, others ethical.  Some goals are unethical, others ethical.  You must still use office politics as the vehicle to achieve your goals, because it’s the ultimate arena in which the necessary decisions and consensus will be made.


Most definitions of politics (or of any controversial topic, for that matter) reflect the moral outlook of the definer.  The American Heritage Dictionary, for example, describes a politician as “one who is interested in personal or partisan gain and other selfish interests” and politics as “partisan or factional intrigue within a given group.”  But the root word “politic, ” from Chambers Concise 20th Century Dictionary, means “in accordance with good policy:  acting or proceeding from motives of policy:  prudent: discreet.”

Motives


Consider these truisms about people and organizations:

• People have principled disagreements about policy and direction of the organization.

• People have different visions and goals.

• People have different personal and selfish interests.

• People have egos and like them recognized and stroked.

• People have different personalities that others react to in different ways.

• People remember past actions and behaviors.

There’s nothing very radical, nor inherently unprincipled or evil, in these statements; most people will easily acknowledge their truth:  that people don’t check their humanity at the door when they punch in on the time clock.

Scarcity

The second truism to consider is the concept of scarcity.  From the days of the pyramids to the present, every organization, company, or government has lived with the reality that there are far more desirable projects and activities than there are resources to manage them.  In other words, work is infinite but resources are finite.

Every time senior management gives you a dollar, or a person, or a week, it becomes a dollar, a person, or a week they can’t give to someone else for something that also has value.  (In financial terms, this is known as “opportunity cost.”)  That sets up an unavoidable competition, as we each strive to get the resources we need to accomplish our objectives, and the playing out of the informal competition is what we know as office politics.  And if our organization is under stress or financial challenge, the struggle gets that much worse.

It also gets worse when what’s at stake is competition for access to status, which is also a kind of limited resource.  For most people, when their personal status is at stake, the kid gloves come off.


Office Politics Defined  

This leads us to the following operational definition of politics:

Politics (\ˈpä-lə-ˌtiks\):  The informal and sometimes emotion-driven process of allocating limited resources and working out goals, decisions, and actions in an environment of people with different and competing interests and personalities.

This definition is intentionally neutral, as simply descriptive as we can make it.  It helps us understand what we’re about.  Here are the key points of this definition amplified:

• informal and sometimes emotion-driven.  Office politics is separate from the formal organizational structure and involves human dynamics and emotions in addition to facts and reason.

• allocating limited resources.  The ultimate outcome of office politics—and how success and failure are measured—is how the organization’s resources—time, money, people—are allocated.

• working out goals, decisions, and actions.  The purpose of office politics is to work out goals, decisions, and actions that can turn into reality.  This often involves negotiation, compromise, and application of power.

• different and competing interests and personalities.  People have different ideas and desires about what should be done, some based on reason and analysis, some based on emotion or personal agenda.  Personal likes and dislikes inevitably affect decisions.

There's no point in getting too wrapped up about the negative side of politics; it's inevitable wherever human beings gather together. Instead, it's better to learn how to play in a principled, positive, and above all effective manner.

Adapted from Enlightened Office Politics by Michael and Deborah Singer Dobson (AMACOM, 2001).

Dobson's Laws (Part 2)

Herewith another collection of my daily SideWise Insights. Enjoy — and be sure to drop them into casual conversation.

Leadership and Motivation

Leadership skills are not fungible. Eisenhower was a great leader; Patton was a great leader; neither could have done the other's job.

While it's useful to tame what can be tamed, most of the management world lives where the wild things are.

The Old Yeller Rule: you have to know when and how to shoot your own dog. Sometimes it's even an act of mercy.

Realism isn't cynicism. A cynic is disappointed that things are what they are. Realists accept the facts and go from there.

It's not enough to learn the lessons an event teaches; you have to *not* learn the lessons it *doesn't* teach.

If someone spends more time and energy scheming to get out of work than it would take to do it, is that person unmotivated?

In the same way expenses rise faster than income, so does responsibility rise faster than authority.

Competition imposes constraints that aren't under your control. This suggests that a portion of your resources be devoted to intelligence.

You have to pay people to get them to work: you personally, not the organization. Respect, gratitude, and support make great paychecks.

"Lessons learned" aren't pleasant, but they're essential for growth. Make watching the game film as pleasant as possible.

There are two very different reasons to delegate: (a) to get stuff off your desk and (b) to train other people. Do some of each every week.

Another proud graduate of the Blanche Dubois School of Leadership: "We rely on the kindness of strangers!"

The job of leaders is making bad decisions, not good ones. When all options are rotten, the decision goes up the ladder.

When I first became a supervisor, I was so naive I actually believed my title meant people would do what I said.

Work is infinite. Resources are finite. Many management problems derive from this essential truth.

Operational definition of quality: It ain't dog food if the dog don't eat it. If no customer or boss wants it, why is it a requirement?

Power and Politics

Your role power is delegated by other people, but your respect power is something you own personally.

Here's a simple test to see if you have office politics in your organization: Do a headcount. If the result is 3 or higher, the answer is yes.

Power is energy that overcomes resistance to achieve work. The corollary of no power = no work.

The power to say "no" is held at lower organizational levels than the power to say "yes." Don't ask someone whose only answer is negative.

If there are multiple stakeholders, the 500 lb. gorilla wins. If there's more than one 500 lb. gorilla, conflict is inevitable.

Your negotiation power is greatest right before you say "yes." As soon as you've said it, your power plummets.

Pick your fights carefully. Some are necessary, some even desirable, but others should be avoided at all costs.

If you tell people they can have what they want, you're a genius. Tell them "no," you're a moron. Spin your "no" so it sounds like "yes."

If the wasps are already swarming, maybe you shouldn't be riling them up even more.

Military retreats don't garner kudos, but managing one takes a lot of planning. If you expect cutbacks, don't wait for the announcement.

Power follows failure like white corpuscles follow disease. Look for the last major failure to find out which department is most powerful.

Keep your friends close, and your customers closer. You need to manage them.

Project Management and Risk Management

Organizational movement up and down the stovepipe is easier; unfortunately, project managers usually need to work sideways.

A project begins life as a gap between where you are and where you want to be. If the project doesn't close the gap, it's a failure.

There are three main project gaps: the official gap, the underlying gap, and one or more hidden agendas. You need to know them all.

All wars are projects, though not all projects are wars. Borrow the best military thinking, but don't confuse problems with actual enemies.

It's not just one damn thing after another, it's usually the same damn thing over and over again. Attack repetitive crises at the roots.

In spite of a quarter-century of project management professionalism, studies show nearly 70% of all projects fail...and the trend is getting worse.

It's well known project management needs to be scaled, but it also needs to be stretched.

Two reasons projects fail: stuff nobody expected and didn't prepare for, and stuff everybody expected...and didn't prepare for.

Success at the project level doesn't mean success at the program level. "The operation was a success, but the patient died."

It's often an advantage to organize your project in stages. Actual results build enthusiasm and commitment.

Identify bad projects early by looking at stakeholder interests and conflicts. Are you being set up as the scapegoat for inevitable failure?

What makes a project challenging? Complexity, constraints, and (un)certainty. Of them, uncertainty is the toughest to manage.

Megaprojects inevitably have megaproblems. Take scale and complexity into account before judging disaster too harshly.

Some objectives are easier to achieve then others, even if they aren't central. It's often smart to pick low-hanging fruit.

Hidden or unstated objectives may be politically sensitive, and can't be spoken out loud without creating problems.

Some key goals are assumed, not stated, but that doesn't mean you're off the hook. Listen carefully to what people don't say.

"Nothing's impossible" implies unlimited resources and time and really flexible performance goals. None of these apply to project managers.

Earning a PMP only means you know the basics. No one ever finishes learning to be a good project manager.

A risk evaluation prices a risk, but price alone doesn't always tell you whether the risk is worth running.

There is no reliable correlation between short-term and long-term outcomes. Bad early can be great later, and vice versa.

If you do something stupid and get lucky, it doesn't validate the quality of your original decision.

Don't drive carpet tacks with a sledgehammer. Most formal systems are way too robust for most normal projects.

The most overlooked question is "Why?" If you don't know, even if you're on time, on budget, and to spec, you haven't done the job.

All wars are projects, but not all projects are wars. Wars have conscious opponents. Don't confuse ordinary risk with actual malice.

You are never the only game in town. What other projects are going on? How's the overall organization's health? Adjust accordingly.

The project isn't necessarily what they tell you it is. It isn't necessarily even what they think it is. Your job is to figure out what it really is.

Projects live in a finite universe, bounded by the triple constraints of time, cost, and performance.

The triple constraints of time, cost, and performance are never equally constraining. What drives your project? What is most flexible?

On any project, make sure you know where "good enough" is. Even Tiger Woods needs to know what par is.

Why People Don’t Do What You Want

Performance problem come in three varieties: "don't know," "can't do," or "won't do." Each has a different solution.

"Don't know" problems are communications failures. Don't expect your team to perform the Vulcan mind meld.

"Can't do" problems may require training, tools, someone else, or you may have to change what you're asking.

"Won't do" problems are about motivation. Everyone's motivated. Some work harder to get out of work than it would take to do it.

There are three reasons for a “Won’t Do”:

If performance is punished (reward for a bad project is an even worse one), expect motivation to drop quickly.

If failure is rewarded (screw up a job, get an easier one), expect failure.

If performance doesn't seem to matter, people put it on the bottom of the "to do" list, as they should.

Whenever someone isn't doing what you want, remember there are only these three reasons: don't know, can't do, and won't do.

Copyright © 2010 Michael Dobson, and made freely available under the Creative Commons attribution license.

Dobson's Laws (Part 1)

I've been practicing my skills as an aphorist through daily tweets since last August, and I'm grateful for the many insightful responses I've received here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Herewith a collection of the first 123 of Dobson's Laws, presented in two parts.

Dobson's Laws are copyright © 2010 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Career Management and Personal Growth

Your strength in one situation can be a weakness elsewhere. You must know when you're operating out of your vulnerabilities and biases.

Never say it can't be done in a first meeting, no matter how sure you are. People tend to think you aren't even trying.

Sweat key small stuff. There's often something that makes the customer disproportionately happy, and you can always use more good will.

There is no situation so bad that you cannot make it worse.

Your attitude changes the world around you. If you look at the world through rose-colored glasses, it's amazing how often you get roses.

Research shows pessimists see the world more clearly than optimists, but optimists make more money and live longer. Take your pick.

Things are what they are, but that doesn't make you helpless. The world is filled with both opportunity and danger.

Failure can sometimes be turned into success. If Pisa's tower didn't lean, no one would visit it.

Fight the temptation to take on interesting projects that exceed your performance bandwidth.

If you age your work properly, lots of it will turn out to be unnecessary or irrelevant. This is the great secret of time management.

Most of us are not-so-good Samaritans. But being a good neighbor is in your best interest, too. Someday you might be the one in the ditch.

How often do you describe your workplace as a war zone? Taking flak, being shot down, or out for blood...pay attention to violent metaphors.

Faking can be dishonest, but it can also be a form of practice. I've faked liking people so long that now I actually do.

We correlate age with wisdom, but that's wrong. Age provides experience; wisdom is learning from it.

Communications, Cognitive Bias, Perception, Influence

Realism isn't cynicism. A cynic is disappointed that things are what they are. Realists accept the facts and go from there.

When people rate their own decisions as "95% certain," research shows they're wrong approximately 40% of the time.

You have three kinds of blind spots: ones you don't know you have, ones you embrace or accept, and ones you try to overcome.

The fundamental flaw of almost all management thinking is the assumption that we are all rational.

You want someone to know something, to do something, or to feel something - there are no other reasons to communicate.

In English, gratitude and ingratitude are opposites, but flammable and inflammable are synonyms. Language is a leading cause of fires.

When there aren't standards for empirical proof, our common ground turns into scorched earth.

Telling people it's going to be OK often influences the likelihood it will be. That's not lying; it's premature truth-telling.

The customer is always right only at the end of the project, when they decide if they're happy and want to pay you.

Say back to them what they said to you before arguing. Until they hear their words in your mouth, they don't believe you listened.

A customer only needs two qualifications: a need, and the wherewithal to pay for it. You have to figure out the rest and then supply it.

Every communications medium has some special virtue nothing else can replace. After 6,000 years, we still chisel some messages into stone.

In the South, an honest politician is one who stays bought. But real politicians are always dependable. Their word is their stock in trade.

Seminars on dealing with difficult people are mostly filled with difficult people. Try looking in the mirror.

Jokes reveal pain and offer insight. Read the cartoons people tape to cubicle walls. They're often cries for help.

Creative Thinking, Problem Solving, Decision-Making

What do you know now that you wish you had known earlier? You can't replay the past, but the lesson might be useful in the future?

Failure is essential to all creative endeavors. Learn to fail early, fail often, and fail cheaply.

What's half of thirteen? A mathematician would say 6.5, but a graphic designer might say "thir" or "teen." The answer depends on the goal.

There's always a question that will illuminate key problems if asked early enough. Try on lots of questions to find the right one.

Fortunately, doing the right thing and the smart thing are usually the same thing. Ethics and self-interest often go hand-in-hand.

An often overlooked way to overcome procrastination: delegation. Is there some way you can get someone else to do it for you?

You are not there to do what the customer (or your boss) says. You're there to do what your he or she *wants.* They aren't always identical.

Real life seldom conforms to the clean, crisp edges of a model. Models are useful, but don't confuse the map with the territory.

Always identify the "good enough" point, even if you don't settle for it. How can you exceed expectations if you don't know what they are?

There are two ways to learn from experience: Have an experience, learn. Or find someone else who's had the experience and learn from that.

SideWise Thinkers know that reality is nuanced and complex. Beware the person who claims to explain it all in 140 characters.

"Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns." Rumsfeld missed one: unknown knowns, things to which our perceptual biases blind us.

You don't procrastinate because you're a "procrastinator," you procrastinate for a reason. Knowing why is essential to overcoming the block.

Creativity trainers mostly teach you how to generate ideas. Useful, but inspiration's only 1%. The rest (the hard part) is follow through.

The Godzilla Principle: Baby monsters are easier to kill than the full-grown variety. Some solutions come with expiration dates.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. That's why we practice what we care about: we start bad, then work up.

Models aren't true or false; they're useful or not useful. A map of Chicago may well be accurate, but in New York City it's not very useful.

Inertia, friction, and entropy are universal: they affect people and organizations as well as physical objects.

Think "both-and" instead of "either-or." People want seemingly opposite things all the time. Often, they achieve them.

Friends and Enemies

Map the political environment around you by identifying allies, opponents, neutrals, fellow travelers, and enemies.

Two factors determine how people treat you: (a) the quality of the relationship and (b) the degree of common interest.

Allies have common interests and a good relationship, so they tend to win when you win. Use them wisely.

Opponents have conflicting interests, but a good relationship. They're valuable; always treat them with respect and fairness.

Fellow travelers have a common interest but a poor relationship. Trust them only as far as their own self-interest takes them.

Enemies have conflicting interests and a poor relationship. Negotiate interests in the short term; build relationships over time.

Neutrals shade in all four directions. Some are best left on the fence; others need to be lured into the game.

Six Skills for Managing Your Boss

I didn’t learn to appreciate the art of managing up until I first had the experience of managing down. One of the common surprises a new manager experiences is how much time you spend doing things for your employees. And when it comes to your employees doing things for you—well, I was so naïve when I first became a supervisor I actually thought that meant that people would do what I said.

How quickly we learn.

When I talk about “managing up,” people often think that’s something you do to your boss, that the goal is for the employee to get power over the boss. But that’s not the case. “Managing up” is something you do for your boss, and if you’re the boss, it’s something you wish more of your employees knew how to do.

At work—and at home, for that matter—we live inside a tightly woven web of mutual obligations. If you’re the boss, your employees are obligated to do certain work for you. And you normally have obligations in return: you review and approve and advise and decide. You go to bat. You run interference. You receive the passed buck. And occasionally you call for a Hail Mary play.

You have a similar relationship with your own boss, and he or she with his or her, and so ad infinitum. And that’s not even getting into the more complicated lateral relationships that cut across organizational boundaries.

Management, in a nutshell, is getting work done through the agency of other people. Whether those people actually report to you is largely irrelevant. You have to manage in three dimensions: up, down, and sideways. The official power you get as a supervisor or manager is never adequate to the task at hand. Ultimately, we’re all Blanche DuBois, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire: we rely on the kindness of strangers.

We had better be good at it.

A few years ago, my wife Deborah and I researched and wrote a series of three books on the practical challenges of the workplace: Coping With Supervisory Nightmares, Enlightened Office Politics, and Managing UP! As we interviewed managers on what worked and what didn’t, we also looked back on our own careers. We had learned most of these lessons the hard way ourselves, many of them imperfectly, and more than a few we had missed altogether.

While the target audience of the book was new supervisors, we quickly learned that higher ranks of leadership were far more interested in the skills we had identified. That’s because we feel the need most keenly because we’re also on the other side.

Of course, you’ve long since learned the basics, but like us, you probably acquired your knowledge the way the cat learned to swim—by being thrown into the deep end. Even more importantly, you’ve learned what’s at stake.

Managing up isn’t just about taking care of your personal career, although it does. Managing up is the missing link in the relationships you need to run a large, complex organization in today’s crisis-prone environment.

SELF

To manage up effectively, you have to start with yourself and move outward. The first issue, the first rung on the ladder of MANAGING UP, is you: the self. A big part of your success in managing others, in whatever direction, comes from your own fundamentals: the quality of your work; the value of your word; and the content of your character

STYLE

From the inward self, we move outward to style: our own and that of others. None of us checks our humanity at the door when we clock in. For better and for worse, human beings have personalities, preferences, and interests. Friction is unavoidable. Without lubrication, the machine grinds, and eventually freezes.

SUBSTANCE

Style without substance, however, is insufficient. We begin our rise up the management ladder by demonstrating technical merit. But we quickly discover that there’s no such thing as a promotion, not really. Instead, each level is a career change, and we have to discover for ourselves what we need to be successful at the next level. The current age requires continuous learning: what do you need to know next? Where do you need to grow?

SYSTEMS

We can’t do it alone. We need systems in order to function effectively. Leaders are necessarily generalists; the higher you go the wider the set of skills and knowledge you need. Eventually you need to know everything, and that’s impossible. We feel we’re stuck in the Peter Principle trap, promoted to the level of our incompetence. But we can pull ourselves out. There are two ways out. Sometimes we have to acquire new skills and knowledge…or else we have to manage others to provide the work we need.

SYNERGY

The word of the day is “team,” because none of us, it is said, is as smart as all of us. Sadly, sometimes the opposite is also true. Nothing is dumber than groupthink gone wild. The real synergy involves balancing the wisdom of the team with the wisdom of the individual. If “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’” it’s equally true that “you can’t spell ‘team’ without ‘m-e.’"

SOLVING PROBLEMS

General rules will take us only so far. We have to apply our skills tactically as well as strategically. Managers manage problems as well as people—not to mention problem people—up, down, and sideways. Some bosses are harder to manage than others, and some live up to the old observation that “BOSS” spelled backwards is “double SOB.”

In an ideal world, you want your work environment to have certain characteristics, from the level of challenge and responsibility you desire to how you want to balance the demands of the office and the home. It's unlikely that happy accident alone will achieve what you want. Take responsibility for managing the relationship between you and your boss, you and your peers, and you and your worklife. You'll be much better off.