The Technician's Fallacy - 10/25/19

I attended Catholic school from Grades 1-12 and grew up in a very conservative household. Smoking cigarettes was a rung below engaging in pre-marital sexual acts but above having your hips too close to your dance partner and eating too much cake on the ladder of sin. (I don’t think there is an actually Ladder of Sin).

So when it came to the stresses of college life, it was natural for me to politely decline when friends and classmates invited me outside for a quick cig during class breaks.  What I began to notice over time was both frustrating, but also intriguing.

I began to observe over the years that if the teacher smoked,  a high percentage of students who also smoked ended up getting internships from those instructors. Despite the quality of work on the walls that may have said otherwise, those students, while often not necessarily the best in the class, often had increased rapport with the instructors as if they were friends. They laughed together and had inside jokes that would trickle into actual class. I felt that as a Chinese-American student in a sea of other Asian students at Art Center, I blended in too well to the introvertive stereotypes to my chagrin. Seeing certain students who smoked with the instructors during class breaks cross that student/teacher barrier was frustrating since I did not smoke.

Friends even had an episode on this.

It shattered my reality put forth by my parents and one that I had practiced up to this point. Be the best and success will come your way. Your best meant 100% or getting an A+ on your report card or exam. I thought this meant having the best work on the wall. But this wasn’t the only thing that was happening. Something else was going on.

And wanted to find out.

Have you ever experienced a classmate or co-worker climb the ranks despite the quality of their work? Some even get bonuses! What the hell, right??

This is what I call the Technician’s Fallacy.

In the book, The E-Myth Revisited, author Michael Gerber outlines the three business personalities: the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. The entrepreneur is responsible for defining the vision of the business and its overall strategy to serve the needs of the owner and customers. These are your officers and Chief roles. The manager’s focus is to achieve that vision through more specific and tactical planning. The technician is directed by the manager and gets the work done.

I won’t delve too much into the other entrepreneur and manager roles but will focus on the mindset and perspectives of the technician, since that is what most of us and working society are. Since the technician’s value comes from his or her ability to do quality work, they think if they can increase the quality of their work, their value increases, and thus so will their pay and hopefully title as well. Therefore, if a colleague gets a promotion or pay raise, it must mean that management percieves that their work is of higher quality. 

But sometimes that isn’t the case at all!

This what I call the Technician’s Fallacy.

The fallacy is that all decisions regarding one’s movement in an organization, or the world, is solely based on the quality of the work they produce. Managers will even cite quality and work ethic during performance reviews, but I bet they would be unwilling to admit that they are subject to rapport and favoritism. As humans, few are immune. We are hardwired to be social animals and have emotions that are naturally affected by the behaviors of those in our lives. Most of us probably spend more time with our work colleagues than anyone else in our lives, including our family and outside-work friends.

While one’s work must be above a certain threshold to get the job, as one expands their mind beyond that of the technician, one should embrace the idea that business is also run on relationships. At the entrepreneur level, rapport is embraced, utilized constantly, and can be responsible for closing multi-million or multi-billion-dollar deals. It's why golf was invented! I'm partly kidding. In the entrepreneurial realm, it is the human connection that can have a stronger influence on the outcome toward success.

My eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Meadows, was famous for reminding us that there are only three certainties in life.

The world isn’t fair. You will pay taxes. You will die.

Deal with it!

Outside of that, the rules are soft, malleable, and sometimes straight-up an illusion. So if you feel like knocking someone else for moving upward despite the quality of their work and are comparing yourself to them, zoom out of the technician’s perspective and see if there is anything else that could be happening. It may not change the way you feel since comparing yourself is a fool’s errand to begin with, but it will remind you that certain systems that we are taught were constant are anything but. Maybe you weren’t meant to be a technician. Maybe you were meant to be a manager or an entrepreneur. Observe what skills you may need to learn and improve on. Then do it. 

Finding a fit for yourself is a lifelong journey, but seeing others succeed shouldn’t make you feel bad about yourself. The game of life can be played in a variety of ways. You are the best at playing it YOUR way. 

So do THAT.

Fuck yeah, it’s Friday!

Photo: MISTERNED.com