mercy and sobriety
Over the last three months, I’ve had a total of 4 drinks. This has been a creeping experiment - I didn’t set out in advance to stop drinking altogether. I didn’t commit to a Sober October or some other pre-set period of abstinence. I got spooked a bit by a Times piece saying that some of the oft-cited research about neutral or positive effects of alcohol wasn’t trustworthy. I’ve increasingly found people in my near circles who have gone partially or fully off the sauce (sometimes in favor of THC). And I’ve been trying to whip a near-40-year-old pair of legs back into running shape - alcohol makes the crucial recovery time between runs less effective. Those combined forces led me to wonder - what if I just cut it out, in a pretty casual and unbounded way, and saw how far I could go?
To be clear, I love a good Negroni. A sorta skunky European lager (Peroni, eg) really hits a sweet spot for me. Finding myself wine-drunk at home among friends has always been a special pleasure. In lieu of these, I’ve said “no thanks” or “I’m good, thank you” dozens of times since September. I’ve risked awkwardness and disappointment that I normally avoid at nearly all costs.
My quasi-sobriety hasn’t resulted in a sea change in my health or my felt well-being. The differences day to day have been both subtle and obvious. Obviously, I don’t have hangovers now. Subtly, I find myself a servant to new masters. I am at the mercy of something else. A central relationship in my life has now moved to the periphery, out of the slippery patterns of management and into the even more slippery patterns of memory.
I am better for this, in ways I sense but can’t yet really see.
What does this have to do with management and leadership and organizations doing stuff? Leaders bear many responsibilities. A challenging one is seeking strong results in the context and culture you have. You don’t get to change what year it is or the century most of your teammates were born in or, likelier than not, who holds the highest political office in the country where you operate. Your finite resources are being spent now, within these generational constraints. And you gotta deliver.
Alongside that responsibility is one that might be even more challenging, dependent on a blend of your intuition and the data/feedback/phenomena beyond you: identifying the chosen constraint that no longer serves you and loosing yourself from it. Sometimes this means ending a relationship with a vendor or teammate. Sometimes it’s a major pivot to a new product or business model. Sometimes it’s as mundane as canceling a standing meeting that no longer changes anything for the better.
The recurring stuff in our worlds, the habits and repeat players, bring their native logic and power to bear on you. Over time, you put yourself at their mercy. They discipline you. They teach you to see the world a certain way, to see one set of options as tractable and ignore others altogether.
It’s really hard to 1) perform the script you have so the audience throws roses and 2) rewrite a key part of that script the same night. Great leaders do this somehow. I’d suggest that the greatest can do it in a way their people can see and emulate - they don’t just make brilliant, spiritually mature moves. They show, tell, and teach.
-eric
