But we're being really careful

Photo by Pixabay.

At some point every psych student hears about the dam. You'll be talking about some concept – denial, probably – and your prof will say, "have we talked about the towns by the dam, yet?"

The problem with dams is that sometimes they fail. And when a dam fails, the results for anyone downstream are catastrophic. So a fun thing for psychologists to do is to survey the people who live in the shadow of the dam. They call them up and ask them, in essence, "how freaked out are you about the dam?"

The towns 50 miles out are aware of it. The ones 30 miles downstream worry. By 10 miles out, they're terrified.

And the towns 2 miles from the dam? The ones whose lives will be violently washed away if the dam fails? Well they consistently tell the pollsters that they aren't worried at all.

Like any good parable, it doesn't make sense except that it does. Because how else could you function? With that kind of fear literally looming over your home in the middle distance, you'd have to shut it out. Wouldn't you? After a few months of living in terror of this thing you'd have to give yourself some kind of excuse to not think about it. To convince yourself that it's not actually a risk. How else could you endure, right?

It's not just dams breaking. Pilots underestimate risks that would prevent an on-time landing. Investors underestimate risk of loss. People who have personally survived major tornadoes still underestimate tornado risk.

And we're in the middle of a global pandemic. We know now that it spreads though the air. Particularly unmasked. Particularly indoors. But there's stuff we want to do. Indoor, unmasked stuff that we really want to do.

And we've found a way to help us stop worrying about the dam.

Viruses don't have cheat codes

Way back in March, we started every cancellation email with "Out of an abundance of caution..." By November nothing about those emails seems abundantly cautious. "Out of a modicum of prudence" is more accurate.

The retrospective here is interesting. We know so much more than we did. And yet, our knowledge is what's fucking us. We know enough to recite the mantra of the past eight months. Our universal get out of jail free card. The incantation, like three swift knocks on the nearest wood table.

Don't worry. We're being really careful.

Don't worry. It's just a backyard gathering. It's just a birthday celebration on a private island. Everyone will be in masks. We're just getting a few people together for Thanksgiving. And all of them have been home, too. We'll only go indoors if someone has to pee. Or if it rains.

Our children's great grandmother recently announced she was flying several states away to attend Thanksgiving. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll be wearing a mask on the flight." She's 95.

And from her perspective she is being really careful. She's not going to raves. At least, we don't think she's going to raves. But even if she were, she'd be masked and have purell, so we'd be right back to the start of our "being really careful" loop.

What it means for work

Bosses, we can't fix all of this. The scale of the human mis-calibration here is massive. And in most cases it steps outside of your lane as a boss to yell at your people for having their friends over.

But we should be doing everything we can to make it easier for our colleagues to make good choices. And when people's risk calculus is messed up, clear expectations are a gift. (Clear expectations, to be clear, are almost always a gift.)

In the office

Over the summer, a friend of ours was told to bring his team back into work. They were deemed essential, and everyone was told it was time to come in. But when they got to the warehouse, no safety adjustments had been made. It was business as usual.

He sent his team home. And then told HQ that he wouldn't call them back until it was safe, essential or otherwise. He went on to enumerate what "being really careful" would look like. In a bulleted list.

If you have people coming into the workplace, they have likely mastered "but we're being really safe". It's what they tell their parents. And partners. And kids. And loved ones. Your job as the boss is to make sure it's true. It's not to point to the sanitizer on the way into the building. It's to put in the time to understand local guidelines where you live, and the best advice globally on safe workplaces. And to advocate loudly so that your team comes into the safest environment possible, or else not at all.

Out of the office

Not everyone is calling people back to an office or a warehouse. A lot of teams have been home since spring and are staying home for the foreseeable future. It's insufficient to say, "everyone is home, therefore we're being really careful." Yes, it's cautious from an epidemiological point of view. But there are major mental and physical health implications to long term isolation. Even with the vaccine news sounding cheerful right now, we're staring down several more months of this. And winter is coming for the Northern hemisphere.

Being careful looks different for you WFH bosses, but we still need you. Think about the boss standing outside the warehouse with his team. Listing out the things that would need to be true for them to be safe inside. What does the list look like for your team? What do they need to work in isolation in a safer, healthier way?

You're likely somewhere in 2021 planning right now. Either the anxiety of not having started. Or the frustration of trying to pretend you have a crystal ball coming out of this ridiculous year. As you write that plan, make sure it anticipates employee fatigue and depletion. This may show up in how you budget, how you set goals, how you manage performance. You ought to calibrate as though you have a workforce that's been home and going through this shit for 8 months. Because you do.

Do your mental health benefits for your employees have annual caps on them? If people are hitting those caps, we need you to figure out how to lift that limit. Is your company setting goals that assume a 100% productive workforce? We need you in that room pushing for a 60% target in the first half. Even when it's embarrassing to be the one arguing for less stretch. No one should be at the gym right now, anyhow - stretch is off the table.

Bosses, that's your job this week. Yes, take care of your people. That's always your job. But this week in particular we need you using your sway in the organization to make structural change. We need you managing up and across. Whatever's on that list is going to need action, if your people and your organization are going to make it through winter in one piece.

You probably already know what emails you need to send.

- Melissa and Johnathan