Do you ever wake up and wonder if the only thing keeping your world from falling apart is a habit that nobody else even knows you have? It is a scary thought to hold in the dark and it is even worse when you see it happen at work. We all like to think we are part of a grand plan and we tell ourselves that our jobs are sets of tasks that anyone can do if they just have the right map.
But the map is not the ground and the list is not the work and we find this out the hard way when the person who actually knows the ground goes away for a while.
Marta works in a lab and she is the one who sees the things that are not there. Her out of office note was very clear and it said that Bo would handle the ordering and the booking for the plate reader and the big meeting on Friday. Bo is a good man and he is fast and he follows the rules like they are holy law.
He took the list and he checked the boxes and he felt like he was doing a great job because the machines kept humming and the boxes kept coming in the mail. Marta was on a beach somewhere and she was not thinking about the jars of salt or the sheets of ink that come with them but she was the only one who knew how to look at them.
The Habit of Quality
The thing about Marta is that she has a frown that saves the company a million dollars a year but the frown is not on her job description. She sits at her desk and she looks at the papers that come with the new batches of peptides and she looks for the small wiggles in the lines of the graphs.
“She does not do this because a manual told her to do it and she does not do it because she wants to be a hero. She does it because she can not help it and because she knows that a small lie on a piece of paper can turn into a big fire in the lab.”
I spent an hour today looking at a photo of my ex from three years ago and I clicked the little heart by mistake and my heart stopped for a beat. It was a small thing that felt like a big death and it made me think about how much we do without a plan. We drift and we click and we watch and we hope that no one sees the tracks we leave behind.
In the lab no one saw that the checking stopped because nothing broke right away. Bo looked at the papers and he saw that they were there and he saw that they had numbers on them and that was enough for him. He did not know that the numbers were the same numbers from a month ago or that the graph was a ghost of a different batch. He just saw a paper and a jar and he put them together and he went to lunch.
“LIST COMPLETE”
GHOST NUMBERS
The Wetness of the Sand
I was wrong about how things work for a long time and I have to own that now. I used to think that a strong group of people was like a machine where you could swap a gear and the clock would still tell the right time. I worked with a man named Sam J.D. who makes shapes out of sand on the beach and he showed me why I was wrong.
“I thought the sand stayed up because he packed it hard with his hands but he told me it was all about the water and the way the salt made the grains stick. He said if you leave the sand to dry it all falls down no matter how hard you press on it.”
– Sam J.D., Sand Artist
I tried to build a tower my way and it fell and I felt like a fool because I was looking at the shape and he was looking at the wetness. Management looks at the shape of the lab and they see Bo doing the tasks and they see the work getting done and they think they have a great way of doing things.
They do not see the wetness that keeps the sand together. They do not see that the quality of the work is just a habit that Marta has and when she goes away the quality goes away too. The scary part is that the three weeks she was gone were fine. No one died and no one lost a limb and the tests kept running.
They see that the check was not done and the world did not end and so they think the check is a waste of time. They think the frown is a bug and not a feature. When nothing breaks it looks like you are being efficient and you feel like you have trimmed the fat but you have really just cut into the bone.
The Leak in the Jar
The work continues but the truth starts to leak out of the jars and the salt is not as pure as the paper says it is. If you are a scientist and you are running a test that takes six months you need to know that the stuff in the vial is what it says it is. You can not wait for half a year to find out that the salt was bad and your life is a waste.
The “Safety Silence”: Why management mistakes a temporary lack of explosions for a successful process change.
This is why some people choose to work with a team that does not leave the proof up to a single person’s mood or a single person’s habit. It is why firms like
put the proof in the box so the check does not live in one head.
They make sure the labs in Tennessee test every single batch with the big machines and they put the real graphs on the site for everyone to see. They do not wait for a Marta to frown at a paper because they have already made the paper tell the truth.
They know that if you leave it to a habit then the habit will eventually go on vacation and then you are just guessing. They have been doing this since and they do not change the rule because they know that research is too hard to do with bad tools.
Silence as a Warning Sign
Bo felt like a king for those three weeks and he told the boss that the work was easy and that they did not need to worry. The boss nodded and he made a note in his head that maybe Marta was taking too long on her checks. He thought about the money they could save if they just let Bo do it all the time.
They mistake a fast hand for a good eye. They forget that the person who stops the mistake is often the only one who knows the mistake was even possible. Marta came back and she sat at her desk and she looked at the pile of papers from the last three weeks and she felt her stomach drop.
She saw the graphs that were too perfect and she saw the lots that did not match the labels and she knew. She did not say anything at first because she was tired from the trip and she wanted to keep the peace. But she knew that the ground under her feet was soft and that the towers they were building were made of dry sand.
She realized that her habit was a cage and that she had built it herself by never telling anyone why she was frowning. We do this to ourselves because we want to be needed and we want to be the one who saves the day. We keep the secrets of the work in our heads because it makes us feel like we have power.
The Real Power of Secrets
But when we do that we make the whole world weak. If the work can not happen without our secret habits then the work is not real. It is just a play we are putting on for ourselves. I thought about this as I looked at that photo of my ex and I wondered if I was ever really part of her life or if I was just a habit she had for a few years. It is a hard thing to think about while you are trying to drink your coffee and go to work.
The lab is quiet now and Marta is back to her frowning and Bo is back to his boxes. The boss still thinks those three weeks were a win and he is looking for more ways to cut the checks. He does not see the tiny cracks in the glass and he does not hear the hiss of the air leaking out.
He thinks the list is the work and he thinks the work is fine. But one day a test will fail and a grant will be lost and a year of life will be gone and they will all wonder what happened. They will look at the list and the list will say that everything was done.
The jar holds the salt and the sheet holds the ink and only the person who stays knows which one to trust.
They will not look at the sand and they will not look at the water and they will not look at the person who was the only one who knew the difference. They will just find a new person to fill the spot and they will give them the same list and the cycle will start again.
We have to be better than the lists we carry and we have to find ways to make the truth a part of the jar and not just a part of the head. We have to make sure that when we go on leave the goodness stays behind and the truth stays in the vial and the salt stays pure.
The Best Kind of Work
The world is full of people like Bo who want to do right and it is full of people like Marta who can not help but see the wrong. The trick is to stop making them fight each other in the dark. We need to build things that are honest by design and we need to trust the proof more than we trust the person who says the proof is there.
If we do not do that then we are just waiting for the sand to dry and the wind to blow and the whole thing to fall back into the sea. And I think I will finally close that tab with the photo of my ex and try to focus on the things I can actually fix today.
There is enough work to do without chasing ghosts and there are enough jars to check without wondering if anyone will notice when I am gone. The best work is the kind that survives the person who made it and that is the only kind of work that is worth the time it takes to do it well.