Chaos Technique

The instructor looked around the classroom expectantly. “OK,” she said. “Ready?” Everybody tensed. “You’re creative! Go!”

I looked at the six different-colored caps in front of me. Which one was creative again? Not red, that was crisis. Blue was learning. Pretty sure it wasn’t one of the other three colors, so I picked up the green hat and slapped it on just as the instructor yelled “Time’s up!”

I looked around and most of the people in the class were also wearing green. The ones who weren’t sheepishly exchanged their caps for the green one as the instructor looked sadly at them. Brother.

The company where I worked for almost 40 years was big on education. During the first half of my career, they’d bring in outside instructors. Sometimes, the classes were held at another company location. I’d frequently tack on some PTO days and make a vacation out of it.

Later, as the company fell on harder times, they shifted to more economical on-line courses. For my last 6-7 years, education was something of an in-house joke. Along with your self-written evaluation, you also needed to list your 40 hours of required education. With no funding, “Self study” was the most popular one; Yep, I spent oh…musta been at LEAST 25 hours on that one web site learning about bwah bwah. Management shrugged; same.

Most of the instructor-led courses were actually quite good. I learned a lot of tips and techniques that I still use. Others, like the “cap game”…wherein we were supposed to wear a particular cap to alert team members to our mood…were also memorable, but for other, less positive reasons. Uh oh, Kat is wearing her yellow “frustrated” cap. I better come see her later.

One of the enduring lessons I learned was from a class on how to say no. I chose this course because I had a reputation of being a soft touch. I just hated to disappoint anyone. The essence was:

1. Give a positive statement
2. Give another positive statement
3. Explain why you needed to say no
4. Finish with another positive statement

The first time I tried this, I was astonished at the effectiveness. A friend wanted me to co-chair a task force on something that was not really my responsibility.

“Wow, Bob, I heard about that task force you’re heading and how it was gonna include Corporate environmental. That sounds like it could really be a game changer! But unfortunately you caught me at a bad time; my manager just asked me to take over the cooling tower project. But good luck, I know you’ll be awesome.”

Bob looked at me in surprise. What? He’s turning me down? But he nodded in understanding and then we went for coffee. Ha!

This worked well for many years. The last time I employed it, not so much.

We went through a decade of layoffs and as people left, their responsibilities were divvied up among the survivors. The technique didn’t work when your manager dumped something in your lap that was formerly done by someone in your department. I found myself taking on more and more responsibility with fewer and fewer resources.

One day, my manager asked me to take a walk with him. Usually, he was hard to keep up with, both physically and mentally. He walked fast and he had a habit of suddenly stopping, pointing at something and musing out loud, then continuing to walk. I learned that these musings really meant fix that the way I outlined, so our walk-talking evolved into me grabbing a notepad and pen first and scribbling down all of his musings on the run.

This day, however, it was a slower walk, just to the cafeteria. He bought me coffee, we sat down, and he outlined a new “opportunity” for me; to take over a responsibility in a sister department for a laid-off employee. Since it was not our job, and would have meant even more work, I used the technique on him and he seemed to accept it.

Three months later, another walk, another run at me. “Are you suuuuure you wouldn’t like that Corporate liaison job we talked about? You know, the more things you have around you, the safer you are….” Our department had already laid off half of its members; I didn’t see how they’d get along with any additional cuts, so I turned him down again.

Another three months, a hastily arranged early morning one-on-one meeting, a pink slip. Damn. Thought about jokingly using the technique to “turn down” the layoff, but neither of us were in that kind of mood. I decided a few days at the beach were in order.

But I needn’t have worried; for, as usual, things worked out better than expected. I was pondering retirement in another year or two anyway and this saved me the agony of second-guessing myself. Also, the division where I worked was sold to another company shortly after I left, so I don’t know what would have happened to my pension.

I tossed all my caps except the green/creative one. Now I wear it when I want to be a creative retired goof-off. 🙂