I work at a non-profit, but it feels like a startup. Ergo, plans change. A lot.
Our leadership does an extensive planning cycle each year, and the entire team brainstorms for two days during an annual offsite as well. Of course our teams also develop roadmaps, break them down into achievable chunks, and try to follow them as best as we can. But if you’re a scrappy company with 120 people in a fast-moving tech space, all the planning in the world can’t protect you from your surroundings changing at the drop of a hat. Projects shift. Priorities shift. And what was so urgently needed yesterday may be completely irrelevant tomorrow.
For someone who’s usually bent on structure and loves organizing things, to my own surprise, I have discovered I can be totally fine with all of this. It just depends on my baseline expectations.
We all have expectations, and they, too, change all the time. But the more time you spend in a certain setting, the more your expectations settle. You’ll develop certain, foundational ideas around how a company, team, or group you’re a part of operates. Then, you’ll factor those in each time you return.
When I joined my company, I had no expectations, and that was great. It really put me into a strong mindset for the first six months or so. But as I got more familiar with everyone and everything, that faded. I developed baseline expectations. Now that I’m onto them, I’ve been wondering how they affect how I feel at work.
In a setup like mine, “Every day, everything changes” is a baseline expectation that works well. It’s almost equivalent to having no expectations. Whenever I carry this attitude into the job, little can faze me, and I simply do what’s required that day. If my baseline expectation is, “I have a plan, and I’m seeing it through,” that expectation will likely be overthrown by lunch time. Then, I’ll get grumpy and complain. The flow of the day could be the exact same. Only my projections were different.
If you’ve been in a company for 30 years, you might need the opposite baseline expectation to not lose your cool: “Every day, nothing changes.” Picking up your kid from kindergarten every day requires different baseline expectations from being the chef in the house, and writing a book on the side needs a different attitude than doing it full-time.
Expectations can feel like impulses. As if they change with the weather. But some, like the sediment of a river, will settle at the bottom of our hearts over time. If you prod them, however, they’ll still stir. Nothing is ever set in stone. To start, all you must do is ask: What are your baseline expectations?
