Management

If you tell me you have never thought of slowly strangling your boss, or tossing them out the window I will say you’re either lying or you are really, really lucky. Being angry at one’s boss is as common as it is normal. Stress, lack of sleep, or just garden variety paranoia can trigger such feelings. It doesn’t mean the boss is wrong (although, they are, aren’t they?) it just means you need a break.

Funny how we, as a species, moved from daily hunting and gathering to farming when we realized we could preserve our meat and vegetables, in both alive and dead forms. I am, of course, talking about raising animals and growing plants, and the various methods of meat and vegetable preservation we have developed. Instead of going out after our meat, we brought the meat to us. Instead of gathering, we grew our plants a few yards away. We wanted to make existence more efficient, simpler. Probably less dangerous. And we have. But just like everything we humans do, we went overboard with it.

I wonder if our ancestors had bosses. An alpha male (or a female). Someone you could shout to from the other end of the cave.

“Umm… Boss?” you’d start on a tentative note, full of a misplaced guilt that you are trying to shake off.

“Yeah, what is it?” The alpha would have a deep voice, an alpha voice, determined, strong.

“Umm … I don’t feel too good today.” Before the alpha says anything you add “I think it’s the rabbit we had last night.” At this point you pause and pray to the god of wind, or thunder, or petunias, that the alpha will soften and suggest that you lie down on your fur covered rock slab and take it slowly, buddy, ’cause we need you at your best. The alpha doesn’t say that, of course, why would they, they are alphas for a reason, and they’ve never taken time off from anything. They just wait for you to go on, to get more rope and hang yourself.  Your voice, along with your guts, and generally everything else in your body, trembles, but you’ve gone this far and you have to continue. “Is it OK if I take the day off?”

The alpha takes her time to answer. Meanwhile, your mind races wildly in twenty different directions, playing scenarios where you apologize to your boss for being so weak, for not caring enough for the good of the tribe, and you promise yourself to never, ever ask for anything again. From now one you’re point on all the action. You picture yourself ready, at the mouth of the cave, with your favorite spear in your hand, shouting “Let’s go hunt! Who’s with me?” The remains of the last night rabbit dinner fight their way out of your stomach, they don’t care which way they exit. You squeeze your rear end tightly shut and try to keep the nausea below the throw-up threshold, and dream of a better world, in which you can get a break.

“OK.” comes the reply from the alpha, and you’re relieved.

I think it was one of these guys, a non-alpha, someone who realized that they’d never be at the top of the group, that came up with the idea of bringing the food to us, instead of going out for it.

“Listen,” he tells the alpha on a rainy evening. “I have this idea, this project I’ve been thinking of lately.”

Outside, the storm is screaming and it’s cold. The alpha pulls her fur around her shoulders and listens.

The future project manager continues. “You know how we go out every day, umm… killing animals and … umm … bringing them here and … umm … eating them?” He is not very articulate, but his resolve is strong. He looks expectantly at the alpha, who wonders what this guy is on about. Yes, they go hunting every day, of course she knows. Curious, she nods in encouragement. He continues, with more confidence this time. “What if we catch a couple of rabbits and keep them here?”

The alpha arcs her big, Neanderthalian furry brows in a V shape. “What do you mean?” The non-alpha understands he wasn’t very clear and makes a mental note to develop his ability to put whatever he has to say in simple words, and explain it like you would a child so that even his boss would understand (something that 100,000 years later would be called “communication skills”). “We keep them here and let them have babies here. Then we eat the babies.”

The alpha thinks that this guy might be on to something. She can’t see all the aspects of the … what did he call it? Project. Yes, the project is not clear to her but she gets the gist of it. “Where would we keep them?”

The manager realizes he hasn’t thought about that but he’s fast on his feet. “We make an enclosure … there,” he gestures without hesitation to the back of the cave. “It doesn’t have to be big. I’m thinking 2 spears by 3. We can use flat rocks to build the wall.”

She doesn’t know what an enclosure is but this guy seems to know what he’s talking about. She looks around at her group. They look tired and hungry. The alpha sighs. She’s been trying to find a replacement for a while now, she feels her energy draining quickly. She knows her time as the leader is short. The non-alpha sitting next to her is not fit to take the group out hunting or to protect them. None of them are. It’s a tough decision, without a leader the group will perish. She’s not ready to give in to a different way of life, though. They have been doing this for generations, the hunting and the gathering, they have perfected the skill. It would be a shame to give it all up now. But there’s no one to run the business the old way, so she understands she needs to accommodate new methods of survival.

A bolt hits a tree not far from the cave entrance. The tree starts burning. That’s the sign for the alpha, the gods have spoken and she gives her accord.

The project manager becomes increasingly enthusiastic. “I will draw the project outline on this wall, here,” he says making up words on the spot, then he points to a different area of the cave “and we’ll keep track of the progress there.” With that, he gets to work.

Later in the week, after the enclosure is done and the first pair of rabbits die from starvation, they learn how to keep food for both the animals they raise and themselves.

Much later, they’re out of the cave. They grow and raise their food on a farm. The rabbits still have their own enclosure that they share with cows, chickens and pigs. Horses provide transport, dogs protection. Life is not necessarily great, but it has its moments. And you get a break, from time to time.

Many millennia after, the whole world is a giant farm, project managers are a common occurrence, and we’re back to going out hunting, this time not for food but for money, so we can buy food and a house and clothing – the modern equivalent of caves and furs. Breaks exist but they are expensive. You can’t take many if you want a better cave, or any cave at all. Alphas are everywhere, not because they are the strongest, or the fastest, but because they are better at cheating in the game. As opposed to our ancestral alpha hero, they think their way is best, they know better. They don’t have the vision, they are not open to the new, and to the change, and they are afraid of losing their million dollar caves, and their 4.7 liter horses. There’s a lot of them too, in the same tribe. They go in different directions because every one of them thinks their solution to the problem is the best. And the tribe suffers.

OK, maybe not all of them, but enough of them to make you think “We can’t get a break, can we?”