Working in The In-Between

It's like how someone who loves their family—parents, siblings, the whole extended web of relations—and has also learned that being together means tolerating things that wouldn't fly anywhere else.

And yet complains privately to a trusted friend that the effort to get together is always one-sided, has always been one-sided, and it would be nice if it didn’t always have to be that way.

If that admission were to leak out, family members are likely to feel bad and then make an effort to balance the get-together responsibilities by visiting more often … which is nice for an hour or two, until it produces more frustration … and then what?

That’s what being in The In-Between is like.

You see a problem, or you disagree with an approach, or you think your effort/expertise/engagement can help … and then a question pops into your head: Do I want to be the person who does something about this?

The question, and the pause, is a boundary. Because you're a pattern noticer with a worked-in wisdom. You've seen what happens: more work … to what end? Or you know what's required—the coordination, the energy, the tradeoffs—because you've done it before. Or those early career moves that happened without question are now being weighed differently. You've learned some things.

This is doubly difficult because of how work works. Naming the problem might now mean you own it. Or you’ve been made accountable for an outcome that didn’t come with the requisite authority to do what needs doing. Maybe you’re just tired of working inside a social dynamic, based in command and control, where the expectation of moving something forward comes part and parcel with having to be a little “assholey” about it.

And it’s triply hard right now. Because while change, uncertainty, and complexity are constant and everywhere, it’s difficult not to think that this moment we’re in is more than just more of those. It really could be a paradigm shifting time for any number of reasons … and who knows what’s on the other side of that? No one.

What do you do?

I don't know. And I mean that.

Am I not ambitious enough? Is this just fear? Shouldn't I want more than this? Better to wait? Are others further along than me?

Questions are not failures. Turns out, the questions are exactly the point.

Psychology has a different name for The In-Between: ambivalence. Ambivalence is the normal human state when you're on the fence about something. In other words: When you don’t know what to do, it’s normal … not to know what to do.

Feeling The In-Between isn’t a character flaw. It’s a signal to explore.

Ambivalence rarely just resolves on its own. Certainty is a moving target. The move is to understand why you’re feeling it. And that’s an easy question: Why am I feeling ambivalent?

The answers are harder than the question. The possibilities are numerous: the job market, a quiet calculation of what's worth it, a wait-and-see equation, family considerations, not knowing what you want next, a loyalty you can't quite name, not wanting to become someone you don't recognize, the gap between what you're capable of and what the system allows.

So what comes back isn't a decision, it's a clearer picture of why you’re in The In-Between. The job market fear is protecting security. The wait-and-see is protecting optionality. Not knowing what you want next is protecting against committing to the wrong thing. The comfort of the current setup is protecting flexibility, stability, a life that works.

Once you name what you're protecting, The In-Between changes shape. You're here on purpose—or you're getting clear on whether you want to be.

You don’t have to be certain to be committed. Psychologist Gordon Allport called it being "half-sure and whole-hearted"—recognize the uncertainty and move forward with confidence.

My head usually gets there first. My emotions and instincts catch up.

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

“Speed/productivity/and task completion are not accurate measures of how well my people are performing.
But curiosity, competence, and generative thinking are.” Nilofer Merchant

point out the good
when you see it.
in life,
in others,
in yourself.
because the world
needs to remember
what kindness and
love look like. - topher kearby via swismiss

“The unexamined life is an empty one, or even a dangerous one. The fact that our wealthy powerful elites don’t grasp this danger, tells us many things. For a start, we need to look outside of Silicon Valley for wisdom.” Socrates vs. The Venture Capitalist by Ted Gioia

“We — not we we, but the collective labour-societal-all-of-us we — have been testing a theory for the last few years. A theory that AI-augmented workplaces will be better. A theory that predicted that a lot of people would lose their jobs (true!) and be unhappy about it (that’s a bingo!) but also that those who remained employed would flourish through a combination of freed up time and mental capacity for elevated work. That last prediction is wrong. Catastrophically deadass backwards wrong.” The People Who Care Are Having the Hardest Time by Raw Signal

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How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on what we’re working through.