Help Isn’t Coming, You’re The Help
Part of growing up is realizing help isn’t coming. You’re the help.
Children think adults have life figured out. To a child, adults run the world. They raise you, teach you, provide or withhold snacks, enforce the rules, coach the teams, etc. Mandatory schooling implies children are lacking. Based on my observations, this is how I once saw adults. (Another framework to think about here is low agency vs high agency.)
So in 2014, I was fresh out of college and a few years into my career. I no longer had the physical characteristics of a child but still hadn’t shaken all the little boys’ beliefs.
At work, I had developed this project that I knew would be both a homerun, but it would need to be approved from on high. I thought this thing should exist, and I was determined to will it into existence. However, management would need to share my vision as well if we were to move forward. Maybe I should bring in help?
I figured I needed senior engineer to be a credible project sponsor; by doing so, the project would immediately gain in status and was more likely to get management’s fast-track approval.
Utilizing project sponsors is an enticing idea. They use their credibility to help scoot your project along while sometimes reducing the workload.
In my case, there were two senior engineers who could sponsor; I explained the project to both. I could tell supported me and the project. But I sensed the projects ins-and-outs weren’t etched in their bones like they were mine— and perhaps rightfully so. They hadn’t invested weeks to understand the constraints, benefits and trade-offs like I had. If they were pitching this on my behalf in a closed-door meeting and management pushed back, would they have what it took to fight for my baby like I would?
This was my fork-in-the-road moment. Depending upon their advocacy seemed like a risk that could help in some ways and hurt in others. Now if I led the charge, I might lack name recognition but could make up for it by elegantly articulating the case. Stay the child who still relies on the adults to fight my fights, or increase my agency and become the adult?
Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
At some point in life you (likely) have the insight that all adults were children once. And, willingly and unwillingly, they made the transition into adulthood that increased their agency (or most of them anyways). This was that day for me.
“And I want to remember it, I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond. A diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought of the genius of that the genius of that, the genius. The will to do that.” - Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
I decided that the project was more likely to get approved if I led the charge. Help wasn’t coming, I was the help. I was going to become the metaphorical adult.
The insight was both burdensome and freeing. On one hand, it meant more responsibility, more friction in life. On the other, increasing agency reduces dependence on others. If you’re an independent person, you probably prefer agentic interpretations of responsibility to “that’s not my job.”
Thus, I went on to set up meetings and spread the good word, utilizing sponsors where I could. But I made sure I communicated MY vision. It took several iterations of meetings to get my point across. In the end, the project was approved and funded.
By doing all this leg work myself, I learned a bit more about how my organization and the politics within it worked, helping me better navigate in the future. I also learned that nobody cares more about your project than you (in psychology this is called the endowment effect) and eventually came to understand the idea of agency & high agency people. Which, not all adults are high agency people but tabling that for now.
Help isn’t coming; you’re the help.
Author’s Note:
Nathaniel Branden said this is one of the things he hangs up in his counseling rooms (“No one is coming to save me”.
“He who increaseth ageency, increaseth sorrow”