Fic: Essential To Your Own

Title: Essential To Your Own
Author: Beatrice Otter
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Pairing: Geordi/Data
Length: 3,364 words
Rating: Teen
Written for: colormejaded in the 90s_channel_tv_exchange 2023

AN: In the Star Trek universe, every species name is capitalized: Vulcan, Andorian, Betazoid, Klingon, Bajoran, Cardassian, etc., etc. Therefore, by analogy, "Human" should be capitalized as well.

At AO3. On tumblr. On Squidgeworld. At Ad Astra. On Pillowfort.

Geordi was staring aimlessly at the warp drive. Enterprise was in perfect condition, he was up to date on his reports, and they were in transit through well-charted space, having just finished up with a delicate aid mission, and heading toward a diplomatic conference. Both were important in the grand scheme of things, but neither were the type of mission that asked much of Engineering.

On a quiet shift like this, he'd normally work on a personal project. Most of his people were; a Galaxy-class ship could practically run itself, when you weren't running head-first into a dangerous situation. And it was easier to keep good engineers when you didn't make them do boring busy-work when there wasn't any real work to do. Dern was writing a holonovel. T'Hes was working on a puzzle, as always—Geordi had tried one, last year, and it had been fiendishly difficult. Mansaray was working on a new intermix chamber design, just for fun, and Geordi dreaded the day she'd get promoted to a desk at Utopia Planitia, where they'd let her experiment with new designs to her heart's content.

Geordi didn't have any projects in progress, and he was drawing a blank on thinking up something he could start. So he was staring at the warp core and trying not to think about why he didn't have any projects in progress.

"Geordi?"

"Yeah, Data?" Geordi said absently.

( Read more... )

On AO3, Sick Systems, and Letting Things Fail

I've been reading through all the posts about internal AO3/OTW workings in the last month or so, and how horrifyingly awful it can be--ranging from "overwhelming" to "intentionally abusive." (synonymous has a great roundup here.) And I keep hearing things that bring to mind Issendai's excellent essay "Sick Systems," and also experiences I've had in my two decades working in/with various nonprofits (mostly Christian, but some secular). And I have some thoughts that current OTW volunteers might want to consider.

First, the essay. Sick Systems: How to Keep Someone With You Forever is excellent, readable, and very evocative. It helps you see how the sick system works, and why people stay in situations and relationships and jobs that are--from the outside--absolutely bonkers and harmful. If it has a flaw, it's that it presumes intentionality on the part of the people (whether employer or lover) who create the sick system. I have seen enough such systems in various nonprofits to know that most of the time they're not intentionally sick and awful. You don't have to try to be abusive and manipulative to create a system that is abusive and manipulative.

All you really need is some combination of: incompetence, lack of imagination, high value on "the mission," low value on the well-being of the people involved (at least compared to "the mission"), a feeling of pressure and scarcity (not enough time, not enough people, not enough money, not enough whatever to accomplish the all-important Mission), and an emphasis on measurable results over all else.

"Incompetence" is self-explanatory.

Lack of imagination means a lot of things, but the one most likely to lead to a sick system is that when there is a problem, you put a jerry-rigged patch on it and continue on, instead of figuring out how to fix the root of the problem, because you can't imagine any other way of doing things than the way you've always done it.

High value on the mission sounds like it should be good! But not if it leads you to forget why you're doing it or if that belief leads you down the road of "the ends justify the means." When you value the mission more than you do the people who are working on the mission or the people you're (supposedly) serving, it's a recipe for exploitation. "You should volunteer an unsustainable number of hours per week because The Mission is so important! You believe in The Mission, don't you?" And any criticism can be deflected because it is insignificant next to the all-important Mission. Or, even better, turned into criticism of the mission. "Oh, you think we should stop abusing and exploiting our volunteers? We can't be abusing or exploiting people because we're Good People doing An Important Thing! You're complaining about nothing because you want to see The Mission fail!"

A feeling of scarcity (whether real or imagined) means that you're under pressure to do what you can without stopping and thinking about the best way to do it. You can't do it the best way, you don't have the time/people/money/whatever! So you have to cobble it together out of what you can, and exploit what you do have to make up the difference. So, for example, if you feel like you don't have enough money, or like the money you have can't legitimately be spent on certain aspects of your work, you might fill the gap with volunteers. And if you don't have enough volunteers to do it, either, you'll do it by pressuring the volunteers to work more than they should.

An emphasis on measurable results, well, you get best at what you measure. And things like "the well-being of our volunteers" and "the goodwill we have created in the community" are really, really hard to measure even when they're absolutely crucial to the core of your mission.

Basically, you put all of these things together in varying proportions and you get a system where people feel trapped, overwhelmed, and yet willing to twist themselves in knots and harm themselves and others to accomplish the mission, and override every reasonable objection or suggestion because The Mission comes first and they can't imagine any other way to do things and even if they did they don't have the time or resources to implement it. And hey, it can't be that bad because The Mission is getting done and we're all Good People here, right?

None of this requires anyone involved to have any bad intentions whatsoever. In fact, it's more effectively harmful if everyone involved genuinely has good intentions and is not personally an asshole. Because if an asshole wants you to do something, even if you believe in The Mission just as much as they do, it's easy to stand up to them and say no if they're being unreasonable. But if it's a good person, a person you like, who is really genuinely sorry about it, but you're the only one who can do it, that's a lot harder to say no to. And then you end up with the sort of Sick System Issendai talks about, despite the fact that everyone involved has genuinely good intentions. (You know, those things they pave the road to hell with ...)

Which brings me to something they taught us in my management courses in grad school, which I have seen work wonders in such situations: Don't be afraid to let things fail.

Let me repeat that: Don't be afraid to let things fail.

Not the entire mission of the organization, of course. But parts of it. Projects. Events. Even parts of the organizational structure. If they can't be sustainably and healthily done by the organization as it exists now, stop doing them. Let them fail. Kill them if you have to. Yes, even if they're important. Yes, even if--especially if!--it feels like the world is going to end and the sky is going to fall and the entire organization/mission will die with them.

Because when you let harmful/unsustainable things fail, a world of possibilities open up. Here are some of them:

• People panic and redouble their efforts to re-create the thing that failed, except with even more pressure (this is by far the worst possible outcome, but it's also the only one that ends up as bad as where you started).
• You find out that when the pressure of "we have to keep this going no matter what!" is removed, people have more freedom to think and imagine and you figure out ways to improve and transform things before it actually fails. If you don't have to keep things going no matter what, you have freedom to try something that may not work. And maybe it'll make things worse, but maybe it'll make things better, and if it makes things worse then it's not the end of the world because the thing was failing anyway, you didn't kill it.
• You find out that the thing you thought was so vital to The Mission ... actually isn't. You might have needed it at one point, but you don't any longer. Now you're free to stop wasting energy on useless stuff.
• You find out that the thing you let fail actually is as important as you thought it was, and it really sucks that it's gone (for now). But now that you're not hustling to Make A Failing Structure Work, you have the space and time to stop and think and figure out a better and more sustainable way of doing it. Yes, some things got dropped through the cracks when you let the previous system fail, but let's be real. Things were falling through the cracks anyway or being done badly enough it might have been better if they had fallen through the cracks (the system was unsustainable and awful!) and once you get the sustainable system in place more things are being handled (and handled to a much higher standard) than ever before.
• You find out that the thing that failed did so because it was designed for very different circumstances than you're actually in. Maybe the people who designed it didn't realize what was actually going to happen, but maybe things have changed in ways you didn't notice while you were trying to prop up the sick system and wondering why it's not working. Now you can design your new system for the way things actually are now, rather than the way someone else thought they were going to be a decade ago.
• You find out that your organization actually has the resources you assumed they didn't. Maybe it takes a rethinking of priorities. Maybe it takes a concerted fund drive or reaching out to specific high-ticket donors. Maybe it takes a different way of recruiting and training and organizing your volunteers. Maybe a lot of things. But the limitations you thought were iron-clad were actually pretty flexible.
• You find out that there are other people in/adjacent to the organization who believe in The Mission, too, and have things to contribute in ways that weren't compatible with the thing that failed, but which you can use now that you're not wedded to The Way We Used To Do It.
• You find out that your organization doesn't have to do that particular thing by yourself. Maybe there are other organizations you can partner with. Maybe there are other resources in the community who are doing the same/similar work.

You think the sky will fall if things fail. You think The Mission will be irrevocably harmed if you stop grinding away at yourselves and others to make the Sick System work. You think everything will be over forever.

And yet, if you genuinely let something fail--not the whole organization, but a part of it!--you will actually be in a better position to figure out what needs to be done and how to do it in a sustainable and non-abusive way.

Quite often, when something gets dysfunctional, the easiest and quickest way to fix it is to let it fail (whether in whole or in part), take a breath, figure out a better way of doing it, and then rebuild something better in its place.

I'm not advocating for people to let the whole OTW collapse. The OTW has done a lot of great things over the years, I am grateful they exist, and for all the time and effort put into it by all the people who have volunteered. I hope the OTW and AO3 continue on for years and decades to come (albeit in a better/healthier way). But specific projects or committees might benefit from being allowed to collapse and then seeing what new thing can and should be done to replace them.

At the very least, the freedom to take a deep breath and say "if this particular part of the mission fails--whether temporarily or permanently--the sky will not fall and the world will not end" makes all the difference in the world.