Embracing Boredom in Operations

So, when I'm not working, there's a pretty decent chance that I'm dancing.  You will note that IT folks/geeks and dancers are somewhat different demographics.

The other night I had a dance lessons with one of my professional instructors - Olga.  Now, Olga is an amazing dancer, a fantastic teacher, a fabulous dress designer and a world-class hair doer-uper.  But when it comes to technology?  Ooof.  Not so much her thing.  In fact, it was when she was having trouble getting my next lesson set up in the on-line appointment calendar that this conversation began...

"Olga, I'm not sure if you're allergic to technology or it's allergic to you - but this always seems to be harder than it needs to be.  I guess watching you deal with technology is a lot like you watching my dancing."

[I will not attempt to phonetically convey Olga's adorable Russian accent]

She noted that she was lucky that she had a job which didn't really require a lot of high-tech skills and then she asked what I actually do, work-wise.

"I oversee operations for the financial and acquisition systems for a huge civilian agency.  When FDA or CDC or other parts of HHS buy things or spend money - many many billions of dollars - our systems track that."

"Oh!  That sounds exciting," she said with eyes wide.

"It is sometimes.  But it shouldn't be.  The goal is to make it boring."

Now, sometimes we have a little language barrier between us, so she wasn't sure if she understood me, "You want boring? Why would you want your job to be boring??"

So I did what I do: I gave her an analogy.

"When you fly, do you want the pilot to walk off the plane thinking, 'Wow - that was boring?' or 'Wow - that was the most exciting flight ever!'

At this point Olga informed me that she hates flying no matter what.  So I tried again, more on her terms.

"Imagine you've been asked to design a dress that a woman is going to wear in a competition in several months.  So you find out what she wants - is it for ballroom or latin?  Does she have a color in mind?  All that stuff.  Then you take measurements and come up with a design.  You find the exact fabric you want, you sew it, put stones on, do fittings - all that stuff in whatever order it's meant to happen.  And maybe it fits just right - maybe there are problems.  Finally, the competition comes - she wears the dress and it looks good.  Let's call that boring.  Exciting is when you find out you don't have quite enough fabric or she changes her mind about the color just after you've ordered the fabric or you do a fitting and you realize some measurement is now WAY off and you'll need to do a lot of tailoring or she puts the dress on the day of the competition and the seam rips or maybe the worst case, she's dancing in the competition and the dress pretty much falls off.  Now THAT is excitement.  But not in a good way."

At this point, the the light bulb was lit brightly over her head.  But then she paused, "Isn't that almost all just good planning?"

Why yes, Olga, it is.  It really really is.