The 4 greatest shocks of 2016

Here's a picture of 2016's last sunset, as seen near Darlington, WI. Looking back, 2016 held four massive surprises for me:

1. The Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series
2. The Army football team finally beat the Navy
3. Donald Trump won the presidency, and
4. I realized I'm not as awesome as I thought.

The first three took some time to assimilate, but were nothing compared to the last.

For as long as I've been in the Army, I've always thought that I was the one who was doing things right, and that everyone else around me was wrong.They weren't mentoring me. They weren't following the regulations. They didn't know how to manage right. But this year -- after my second mediocre command evaluation and a health problem with my left leg -- I realized that the problem is really with me. The Army will always be the Army; I just haven't adjusted to it.

To a certain extent, every job is like a game, and success at it depends on how willing we are to play along. As a competitive person, I like to do well, so I'll play along if things go my way. Unfortunately, I'm not good at most games, and I tend to check out when things don't go my way. I've been that way since grade school.

I also tend to see organizations like big clocks, with success dependent on everyone fulfilling their role. If you give me a job -- no matter how big -- then I will get that job done, and over time I'll focus on doing it more and more efficiently, until eventually I hand over to my successor a wonderfully fine-tuned process. I'm good at that.

What I'm really, really not good at is, "staying a step ahead of the boss," a phrase I've heard several times. I simply have *no idea* what that means. I mean, if you'd wanted me to do something, why didn't you just say it? If nothing else, at least explain some part of it and then tell me, "I need you to figure this out." If I don't know what the problem is, it's really hard to develop solutions. And I hate wasting my time doing pointless things that don't matter.

I'm also really bad at "being pro-active." If something's outside my realm of concern (I imagine myself like a gear), then I don't worry about it. I typically have enough to worry about without having to take on someone else's job. But this doesn't often work in the Army, where things are far more fluid and the goal seems to be to "get in good with the boss." From what people describe, it's like a fraternity (something I have no experience with) -- if you're the boss's "go-to guy," then you win. I don't play that game very well.

So as I come into an organization, it's really important for me to have a good understanding what the goal is. If it's, "You're job is to make me look good," that's really hard for me to process. I need things to be much more concrete. Unfortunately, what I've found is that most people do not think like me. I'm a manager. I like efficient organizations who do their jobs and then go home. Other people just want things to get done without them having to direct traffic all the time. They don't want to manage -- they want to lead. It makes sense, but it's not who I am.

In the Army, this is a liability, and it's one that I only fully realized this past year. I'm not exceptional. I'm not even above average. I'm mediocre, at best. And unless I can pull something off really big, my current path in our down-sizing Army will lead me to non-selection for major.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world -- to be separated from the Army while living in Hawaii, where I have a house and an MBA and a lot of defense industry contacts. But it would still be disappointing. My grandfather asks me every time I talk to him, "When are you going to make major?" There's no use giving the full story because he'll only ask again next time, so I give him the short answer: "Maybe 2019." But it's still painful.

The good news -- and this is what I look forward to in 2017 -- is that I do have something big (and positive, and helpful) planned. And fortunately, it is likely to happen before my evaluation is due in mid-February.

We'll see. I look forward to it.