Don’t be a victim

Don’t be a victim. I first heard that admonition from a senior executive when I was at AOL. He was commenting on complaints he was hearing after a big reorg. AOL, like all big technology companies, was prone to massive reorganizations. Some were genuine attempts to manage a company in the throes of hypergrowth in an era of rapid innovation. (May you live in interesting times.) Some were simply house cleaning by new managers. Some were senseless. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, the cynics called it.

I used to detest the condescension in people’s voices when they said it. “Don’t play the victim,” usually came out in a sneer. It seemed a convenient way for managers to brainwash their underlings into thinking they should be thankful…well, for something. For still having a job, usually.

But then I found myself using it. “You need to suck it up and put your ego aside,” I’d say when someone who worked for me complained too much. After a while, I got tired of the parade of people coming into my office to complain. The smart ones put their heads down and kept doing their job even as morale declined and frustration increased. In a normal company, many of the complainers would have left if it hadn’t been for the golden handcuffs.

But the complaints were increasingly legitimate. At AOL we ended up suffering the consequences of a series of increasingly hubristic and misguided decisions by senior management, culminating in the merger with… well you know who. We had to shut down worthy projects, give up scarce development resources for somebody else’s pet project, shuffle talented people into service roles in a matrix organization. Ours was “not to reason why,” ours was “but to do and die.” The worst was that we didn’t transfer our content and functionality onto the web even after it was clear that dialup was doomed. The rationale for that came from a certain CEO who sacrificed long term strategy for short term earnings. That drove up the stock price and we all benefited. Until we didn’t.

As with most cliches, there’s some wisdom in the admonition. Complaining is wasted breath. Don’t let yourself be defeated by external circumstances. Accept, don’t complain. Don’t let your anger and frustration rule your life. Good advice at the end of the day. It seems an integral part of human nature to transfer blame away from ourselves to something or someone else.

Our openness to good advice, however, is directly correlated to our opinion of the “advisor.” If you don’t respect the person, it’s hard to respect his or her advice. Even when they’re right.