Anticipating Absence: Passings

The passing of a well-liked and well-respected co-worker can be upsetting to all who knew him or her. And that passing can be disruptive to the organization — all the more so if the person we lose is a person of influence or an organizational leader. The effects are especially dramatic when the workplace in question carries out what is commonly called knowledge work.

When the people we lose were engaged in "thinking for a living," they're difficult to replace, because we must replace more than just skills and experience. As I've noted in recent posts, we must also replace knowledge about the state of the work, much of which is undocumented and unrecorded. But there's still more. People who think for a living can't think very well when they're grieving the loss of a valued colleague, or when the organization in which they do their thinking is in a state of turmoil.

With time, we can recover. We can gather and share our grief, and help each other heal. Even when we lose several people at once, as many people and organizations did on September 11, 2001, we can come together and help each other heal until with time, we learn to cope with our loss.

A pandemic is different. In a pandemic, losses can arrive
repeatedly, with spacing between
each loss. Every loss kicks off a
new cycle of grief, emotional
turmoil, and organizational chaosDuring a pandemic, as in other times, the losses can arrive in numbers, but in a pandemic, losses can also arrive repeatedly, with spacing between each loss. And so every loss kicks off a new cycle of grief, emotional turmoil, and organizational chaos. Just as we're recovering — or beginning to recover — from one loss, another loss arrives. We might be left wondering, "When will this end?" Or perhaps, "Will this ever end?" Knowing that the pandemic will wane soon doesn't help much.

Knowledge workers can't produce much of value in such circumstances.

The effects of the losses we sustain during a pandemic differ in other ways from the effects we experience in normal times. Knowing about these differences enables us to prepare. Below are three examples of those differences. In what follows I refer to the Person who has Passed as "Parker."

Unrecognized defects

Whenever a workgroup loses a valuable team member, and a replacement assumes the responsibilities of the lost team member, there is a risk that defects in the work underway might go unrecognized. But when the work involved is knowledge work, two additional factors conspire to exacerbate this problem.

First, recognizing a defect in knowledge work can be inherently difficult. The required evidence might not become available until additional work reveals it. In some instances, only Parker had the intuition and vision required to see in advance what problems would eventually emerge.

Second, the defect might not be a flaw in something that exists. It might instead be an omission in the work product, or a failure to take advantage of a rare opportunity. And because of a cognitive bias known as absence blindness [Kaufman 2010] [Brenner 2020], defects of omission are especially difficult to notice. When we're looking for defects that are inherently difficult to find, absence blindness compounds the problem.

Loss of rivals

One particular difficulty arises for any of Parker's political rivals. And the intensity of the difficulty heightens with the intensity of the rivalry. The Surviving rival — whom I refer to here as Sam — might experience regret or guilt for having had difficult times with Parker. In some cases, Sam might even feel responsible for Parker's illness. This can happen, for example, when Sam has taken steps that caused Parker to take a risk that might have led to Parker's exposure to the virus. An impulsive business trip, for instance. Sam's emotional difficulty can become intense enough to affect for an extended period his ability to work.

Another related form of this difficulty occurs if Parker passes on shortly after an altercation with someone I'll refer to as Shane, a survivor. If Shane doesn't have an opportunity to make amends with Parker before Parker dies, Shane might experience feelings of regret for the altercation — feelings that can endure well past Parker's passing. If Shane's feelings become intense enough, they can affect his ability to work.

Overlapping losses of people of different rank or stature

When someone passes singly, we might conduct a gathering to remember him or her, and to join together in healing. But when people pass away closely spaced in time, we tend to arrange joint gatherings in memory of several people at once. If the interval between losses is short enough, the gatherings might be in memory of people who had greatly differing rank within the organization.

The respective roles of those who have passed might differ sharply in their value to the organization. Some might have been very highly valued by the organization; some less so. But we are all people. Our values as people might differ much less than our values to the organization, one to the next. And to some survivors, those less valued by the organization might be more valued as people.

Joint gatherings in memory of those lost can make these value differences more obvious, which can lead to additional pain for some survivors. We can manage this risk by deferring these gatherings until the pandemic has waned, and then conducting a single gathering for all.

In a few months, maybe sooner, a peak in this pandemic will become evident. The pandemic will begin to fade. As organizations consider ending their work-from-home policies, the desire to return to normalcy will probably bias the decision to return to the office or workplace. But a premature decision to return to work-in-office will only extend the pandemic and add to the losses. Keeping in mind the losses endured might serve to make the return-to-normalcy decision a bit more objective. First in this series   Top    Next Issue

Are your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!

Footnotes

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Project Management:

Who Would You Take With You to Mars?

What makes a great team? What traits do you value in teammates? Project teams can learn a lot from the latest thinking about designing teams for extended space exploration.

Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: III

Facilitators of synchronous distributed meetings (meetings that occur in real time, via telephone or video) can make life much easier for everyone by taking steps before the meeting starts. Here's Part III of a little catalog of suggestions for remote facilitators.

Project Improvisation Fundamentals

Project plans are useful — to a point. Every plan I've ever seen eventually has problems when it contacts reality. At that point, we replan or improvise. But improvisation is an art form. Here's Part I of a set of tips for mastering project improvisation.

Design Errors and Group Biases

Design errors can cause unwanted outcomes, but they can also lead to welcome surprises. The causes of many design errors are fundamental attributes of the way groups function. Here is Part II of our exploration.

How We Waste Time: I

Time is the one workplace resource that's evenly distributed. Everyone gets exactly the same share, but some use it more wisely than others. Here's Part I of a little catalog of ways we waste time.

See also Project Management and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming October 5: Downscoping Under Pressure: I

When projects overrun their budgets and/or schedules, we sometimes "downscope" to save time and money. The tactic can succeed — and fail. Three common anti-patterns involve politics, the sunk cost effect, and cognitive biases that distort estimates. Available here and by RSS on October 5.

And on October 12: Downscoping Under Pressure: II

We sometimes "downscope" projects to bring them back on budget and schedule when they're headed for overruns. Downscoping doesn't always work. Cognitive biases like the sunk cost effect and confirmation bias can distort decisions about how to downscope. Available here and by RSS on October 12.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrendbTtLLSVlUPPCNkAner@ChacthFxWKdRwnLylOCDoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info