Messengers Make Me Melancholy
Any person who relays messages to you from the boss, is now your new boss.
An excellent messenger might relay exactly what the big boss asked them to tell you, but only after they have reframed it, recharacterized it, and added their own slant.
Every messenger does this. Whether they do it consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant. Whether they do it maliciously or innocently is irrelevant. What matters is that it happens.
When a person speaks for the boss, you work for that person. You must do what they say.
If a messenger gives you a handwritten note from the big boss, your response to that message will be reframed, recharacterized, and delivered as interpreted by the mind of the messenger.
The big boss is going to hear their words, not yours.
And God help you if you entrust an innocent question to a messenger. By the time that question enters the ear of the emperor, it will sound like a childish challenge or an anger-inflaming insult. The only thing you can do now is kneel down, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye.
Have I put the matter too strongly? If so, let me soften it with this short summary: You are forever at the messenger’s mercy.
Which is perfectly okay if you do not love your job.
Are you putting in your 8 hours then going home to begin living your real life? If so, you are incredibly lucky. Do your 40, collect your check, live your life.
I envy you.
But if you are cursed with ideas, innovations, and experiences you believe have value, you will forever be frustrated by the bleak barrier that separates you from that pristine person who can say “absolutely yes.” Your cheeks will be chapped by silly slaps from interfering intermediaries. Your days will be darkened by dullards. Your mind will be massacred by meetings with morons. (Yes, I am toying with alliteration today.)
You need to get a different job. You need to have direct contact with that one special person who can say absolutely yes without having to clear it with someone else.
I spent my youth writing ads for clients who grew too big and became too busy to speak with me directly. When I became weary of living in the leg-irons and handcuffs imposed by messengers, I cut two tablets of stone from the heart of Mount Moriah. Those tablets contain two sentences:
- “I cannot work my magic unless I am in direct contact with the person who has unconditional authority to say ‘absolutely yes’ without having to check with someone else.”
- “If that person is too busy to speak with me personally, I am too busy to write his ads.”
Either you have felt what I am describing, or you have not.
Again, I envy you if you have not.
If you have felt that frustration:
- Get a job working with an entrepreneur who will take the time to hear you.
- Honor that person by giving them your best.
- If that person’s success causes them to feel the need to insert a messenger between them and you…
- Take your stonemason’s hammer and your stonecarver’s chisel to the ancient mines of Mount Moriah. Sit down and think for awhile in the shadow of the Almighty. Then carve what you feel.
If Mount Moriah frightens you, then you must learn to live with chapped cheeks, darkened days, and a massacred mind.
I will leave you to make your own decision.
As for me, I’m placing my stone tablets in my front window where everyone can see them.
Roy H. Williams
NOTE FROM INDY: August 13-14: Only 15 people will be allowed to attend an extremely special business class taught by Jeffrey Eisenberg. The wizard is hoping his young adult grandson can attend.
“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”
– Arthur Toynbee
“You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this, but you mortals never seem to see. We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind