Bossy

In the world of professional activism, there are two basic paths. The first is to work for an organization whose goals are in line with your own. In this way, you can lend your professional skills to a cause, without dealing with the labor (and money) involved in starting your own organization. Other benefits include, a reliable salary, steady work load, and the confidence that the work you are doing is being used as currency in a formula that works. This is key. Working within an established organization means you will never have to deal with the crippling self doubt that comes when you attempt to strike out on your own. Safety first.

The major downfall of these organizations is that they are slow, cumbersome, political, and bureaucratic. Working for someone else, means you are working for a person (or people) who are currently experiencing the crippling self doubt that comes with striking out on their own. These people can be extremely protective of their organizations and their vision – usually to a fault. These non-profits are like their children, and, just like parents these people are subject to extreme bouts of arbitrary rule making, mind changing, punishment and reward. They like their ship to be run exactly like it says on the chore wheel in the den – nobody strays from the protocol. Ever. Those who do are considered a threat to progress and are quickly exterminated (or broken of their willfullness).

Unfortunately, the problems apparent here do not go away as the organization matures, they simply become codified in manuals, position statements, job descriptions, and the elusive pool of “common knowledge”. When you enter into an organization you will be immediately baptized in protocol and given explilcit instructions on how to do your job. It doesn’t matter if you have done this particular job for other organizations. Outside knowledge is a threat, and will be treated as an illness which must be quarantined and sterilized for the safety of you and your colleagues.

At a certain point, your job will actually begin to feel as though you’ve regressed to your childhood. You will have to ask permission to make even the most trivial of decisions, and the answer you will receive will be “do this – it’s how we have always done it”. To which you might reply “but, I don’t like the way it was done before. I would like to use my professional knowledge to change this organization for the better and I think this could help”. You are now fired, or at the very least demoted and judged in the eyes of your colleagues. You will be looked upon with skepticism and doubt. Your job will become scrutinized heavily by people from other departments who have never had any business even speaking to you before, let alone meddling in your affairs. “I want to help you” they will say. “I am here as a guide and a resource”.

In healthy, functioning organizations these people really will only act as a resource to tell you which file something is in, or where the fire exits are. In incestuous, ill-functioning organizations, this person will basically ghost write your job to insure that you are not jeopardizing the company (Because that’s why you want to work for them right? To come in, muck about, and ruin everything they’ve worked for, right? Right.)

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I consult a dictionary, it tells me the meaning of a word, not how to write an essay. It is important to realize that some people will treat “newness” in the organization as “dumbness” and will attempt to strip you of any confidence you may have had that you are actually qualified to do the job for which you were hired. These people will treat you as though your job is going well in spite of you, not because of you.

What it is also important to realize is that these people are what’s wrong with the organization, not what’s right. In order to continue doing your job, you have to understand that the only way to carve a better path is to put in the work.

When I started working for non-profits eight years ago, I was convinced they were the only way to create meaningful change. The same way that people still believe participating in their government is the only way to change the system.

It’s not true. Participating in a system that is fundamentally flawed or corrupt will not lead to progress. It will lead to the illusion of progress. To a bubble where each step looks meaningful within the context of the system, but when viewed from the outside can look foolish, arbitrary or worse – ineffective.

The answer is not to quit your job (unless it’s clearly never going to improve – you have to consider your own sanity at a certain point), but to perform to the absolute peak of your ability as though you are your own one-lady organization. If your job is to write grants, then write grants as though the cause is your boss, not your supervisor. We get involved with non-profits to help make a problem better. Changing the organization you work for is not necessarily the best use of your time if you could be using your time to actually help the cause (sometimes changing the organization is the best use of your time, but that probably isn’t the case unless you work for the Humane Society).

Think of it as though you’re a doctor who’s been hired by the wound, not the hospital. A veritable Doogie Howser of child-services, or wildlife rehabilitation or whatever. You will not help anyone by succumbing to frusteration and petty infighting. You will help by bringing in money, reaching out to more people, and getting more press.

If it helps, also think of it as training for the day when you will have your own non-profit/daycare that you can use to further your own agenda and create fodder for your employee’s blogs.

As hard as it is, we have to be the better people.
I know this all sounds really lame, but it’s the only thing that is pulling me through right now.

See you on Sesame Street folks,
xoxo-Weekends.

~ by Reno on July 23, 2008.