by Vicki J. McCoy
Sequester: (noun)
Automatic cuts in spending; (verb) To isolate or hide away someone or
something.
The 2013 sequester, no matter how well anticipated or
planned for, is still a game-changer for Federal agencies. It is painful, and intended to be so. Agencies are now retrenching, reconsidering normal
daily activities such as hiring and contracting. They are pulling back from priorities to
refocus on highest priorities, including how to avoid furloughs and
closings. The current operating
environment is one of great uncertainty.
This is something that Federal public sector, unlike the private sector,
has been largely protected from, and for good reason: Federal agencies are established for the
purpose of providing services that the American public needs. The premise underlying their creation is that
meeting these needs is important enough to be sufficiently funded on an ongoing
basis. For business and industry,
profitability is the goal—no profit, no business. This is true no matter how altruistic the
company’s mission. Uncertainty abounds in the private sector. For the Federal
public sector, in contrast, service is the driving purpose, and funding is
assumed—no funding, no service. A high degree of certainty has been a
given. Until now.
While sequestration is a hot-button political issue, all
sides agree that sequestration has impacts.
And most of those impacts are ones that you and I, as Federal workers
(employees and contractors) have limited control over. We can adjust, adapt, and mitigate, but we
can’t control...with one exception. We
can
control the impact that sequestration has on our thinking.
A natural, human reaction to any downturn in our
circumstances, including a significant drop in available cash, is that we will tend
to pull back, to contract. By that I
mean we often move in knee-jerk fashion from a mindset that believes the world
is a place of abundance and limitless possibilities to a mindset of lack. The danger of coming from a place where we
see the glass half empty is that it stifles our in-born creativity. Possibilities are still there; we just can’t
see them because we are focused on the problem, not on possible solutions. And this is true whether the problems are big
ones or little ones.
Here’s an example of how it works: I went to see visit my
young grandson in the hospital recently.
I spotted a parking space near the entrance to Children’s Healthcare of
Atlanta and started to pull in.
Immediately, I saw that I couldn't fit in the space. An SUV was taking
up the adjacent parking space as well as part of the one I was after. Storm clouds formed in my mind, and I fumed at
the SUV driver’s lack of consideration.
I was deep into a mindset of lack, where blaming/complaining is the
modus operandi and creativity is asleep at the wheel. The very instant I chose to let go of that
mindset, however, I realized that there were many other parking spaces nearby.
The possibilities I hadn’t seen became apparent. (I even felt some compassion for the harried
parent or grandparent who may have parked in a hurry, with the same worries on
their mind that I carried that day.)
Yes, the impacts of sequestration are real, and far weightier
than a parking space, and they must be dealt with head-on. You won’t get any Pollyanna thinking from me
in that regard. But what we can’t afford
is to let sequestration makes us smaller in our thinking or kill our dreams. Let it go from a being
a noun to a verb in our lives. In fact, now, if ever, is the time for us to be thinking
bigger, more creatively; to be challenging ourselves to be visionaries and to look for the
possibilities in this crisis.
In a July 2012 article in Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/words-can-change-your-brain/201207/the-most-dangerous-word-in-the-world, Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Waldman described
the brain chemistry of a negative state of mind this way: “If I were to put you
into an fMRI scanner—a huge donut-shaped magnet that can take a video of the
neural changes happening in your brain—and flash the word “NO” for less than
one second, you’d see a sudden release of dozens of stress-producing hormones
and neurotransmitters. These chemicals immediately interrupt the normal
functioning of your brain, impairing logic, reason, language processing, and
communication. “ Creativity in
negativity? Not gonna happen.
If there will be fewer people and less money to provide our
vital services to the American people, then we in the Federal sector definitely will have to come up with
new ways to get things done. We will need all the creativity that resides in
each of us to find these ways. Einstein put it well when he said that we cannot
solve problems from the same consciousness in which they were created. Our brains need to be free to make new
connections, to see possibilities and solutions we never considered before. We need
synergies that can be found between and among people who are willing to
let go of the old ways of thinking and doing things to pursue ways that are yet
to be realized. If we sit around staring
at the half-empty glass, waiting for certainty, nothing will get done.
For myself, I’m looking at new technologies through which I
can bring some of my services without the cost of travel. I’m working on it with folks who are psyched
about the potential. I’ve made a conscious decision to leave the comfort of the
familiar for the growth that resides in the land of unknown possibilities. It’s
scary but necessary.
I invite you to join me in taking a page from Steve Jobs and
asking ourselves not how we can survive the current situation, but what we can
create or build in it.
I’m convinced the possibilities are limitless for the
un-sequestered mind.
