Monday, April 2, 2012

Remember This Thing?

Yes, I've read all the websites and blogs about dealing with anxiety.  If you've launched a start-up or a start-up-like environment you know what I'm talking about.

Strangely I'm going through the most stressful/anxiety filled project of my career and it's not really a true start-up.

This is a very start-up-like environment though.  It involves a small team of staff and a few volunteers in an organization that includes dealing with the public.  I'm rebuilding the business, and putting all the pieces into place. I'm doing everything from marketing to back-end office tools development to managing recruiting to finance and accounting.  It picks up from the points to which I have brought other start-ups.

I'm going to blog a lot about this to help me deal with the stress, so I should develop an appropriate euphemism.   In my previous anxiety-therapy blog entries, I was dealing with the "oceanography."   I don't know what I'll use here, but I'll see what fits as I go forward.  Maybe food services or something.

Now I'm running this company - it's been around for more than a decade, and has some reasonable public-support, but it has been stagnant for a long while, run by fairly marginal sorts.  It hovers on the edge of technology, but it hasn't been a technical leader in ages.   It uses my business and technical skills but in a very operational sense.  My core R&D skills are handy in terms of overcoming challenges - but all the challenges are mundane.

I keep telling myself that this role is a sort of philanthropy thing.  I'll work for a quarter of a normal salary while helping this somewhat socially conscious agency to do a better job and fix all the major problems so it can last for another decade or two.

So I've done a bunch of that stuff.  I deal with a board that is partially meddling and partially apathetic.  I have a staff that is paid rock bottom and performs as one would expect at that level.  I should probably fire half of them, but if I do then I've got to do their jobs while I search for replacements, and there aren't enough hours in the day.  Plus finding replacements at this level means searching for weeks to probably end up with someone just as unreliable and untalented.

No, the only path forward is to fix the organization, make it financially functional so that I can add staff at reasonable pay levels, then turf out the losers.

So I'm well on my way.  Think of the biz as two parts. Let's use a hot-dog wagon analogy.  I've fixed a major problem with the hot-dog supplier and the cart, but I need a better spot.

I've got the street lined up and the, say, city permission to move the truck there, but they're making it hellishly slow.  So I'm sitting here waiting for bureaucracy to follow through.

Anyway, I won't stretch the analogy too far.   It's Monday morning and I'm going to have to get into the hellish work-day activities.

Why all the anxiety and stress in this role?  I'm not sure yet. I guess my reputation is on the line, and there are thousands depending on my organization, plus a handful of staff (even if they are marginally skilled).  That carries some of its own stress.  There is a board and my representations to them that I can fix their organization - which I've already made huge strides toward.  None of this stuff feels particularly weighty on me.

When I dig to find the source of the stress, I keep coming back to my first love - the R&D world, crafting stuff that nobody else has done, working on a world stage in that the patents and prototypes I've fostered in the past are typically the first time those things have been done.   I think my stress is partly that while I'm crafting a new path for this languishing business, even though I'm turning it around and have moved them out of the red and toward a brighter future, I'm not pushing that other envelope anymore.   Life is so short and there are so many interesting things to do, I feel like every day I'm not working in that space, I let other ideas and opportunities drift away.

My whole plan was to spend maybe a year in this 'food services' operation. Rescue the org, pursue one or two 'exciting' new directions that are a bit closer to my past R&D space ('oceanography!' lol).   I need to keep my eyes on that prize and work a parallel plan that includes my exit.

The good news is that the stock market continues to thrive and my diverse and meticulously crafted portfolio surges ahead from the doldrums of late 2008.   Even though that doesn't treat my stress levels, it does remind my more logical intellectual brain that I'm in a stable position financially in spite of my tiny salary in this project.

I'll probably continue to dump my story here as self-therapy going forward.  I'll try to celebrate my successes in this role, and not do the endless-brain-loop on the large forces that stand in the way of progress.  My typing here should save some of my loved-ones the hassle of listening to my broken-record replays, and provide some reflective references for the future.