“If I had known what I know now, I would never have accepted this job.”
The government manager of a high-stakes, high-value program sighed – and at the same time, there was a shimmer in his eyes that said something different. Something like: “If I had known what awaited me, I would have refused – and missed out on this huge, risky, challenging opportunity.” That it was also kind of…cool? Rewarding?
The day before, Roos and I had a meeting with several people on the question “to fieldlab or not to fieldlab” with the ‘loonaangifteketen’. The ‘loonaangifteketen’ is a critical Dutch government digital infrastructure for tax and social security contributions, where employers electronically submit wage and employment data to government agencies. Although the general idea of holding a Fieldlab appealed to them, the work and investment required from all involved parties seemed to set them off. There is the organizational aspect of it, which requires a lot of work and thinking through, setting the right conditions for the programmers and makers of other things like policy, law, processes, at the event. Choosing and defining the case, designing the right materials to communicate what you will do, and have done, communicating continuously with stakeholders – all of this takes time and effort. But the rewards are real, and the rippling effect after the event is amazing. We have not yet organized a Fieldlab that we regret.
No one captures these kinds of dilemmas better than the Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska in “One Version of Events”. She lists all types of objections and fears that we would have had, had we been given the choice to enter life as we know it:
If we’d been allowed to choose,
we’d probably have gone on forever.The bodies that were offered didn’t fit,
and wore out horribly.The ways of sating hunger
made us sick.
We were repelled
by blind legacy
and the tyranny of the glands.
The list goes on and on, life is not appealing at all – or maybe, but only some lives, under some circumstances. Luckily, or not, we don’t have a choice, and we sure don’t know what awaits us in real life. In work, we think it’s different. We make budgets, business cases, and step-by-step plans like we presented to the colleagues from the ‘loonaangifteketen’. Even if you think something will take long, and a lot of effort – it will probably take longer, and more effort. Science says so. And even if we are aware of this fact, we will still overestimate our abilities and underestimate the effort. Could it be that we are programmed to be optimistic, to avoid analysis paralysis? Would we ever begin anything at all, if we knew what it would cost us?
To make things more complicated, there are choices that will alter the person we are altogether. This means that the person making the decision is not the same as the person who will experience the effects of that decision, because the choice itself will change you. Having children is a good example. There is no explanation in the world that will make you understand what it means to become a parent, and only when you are one, will you know what this means. But also choices for a certain profession, made as a child or young adult, are choices that we cannot fully foresee the consequences of. Every time we try something completely new, to some extent, we face this dilemma. And yet, this is how we live, evolve, and develop.
The choice to organize a Fieldlab or not is not equal to that of having a baby or choosing a profession. It is a challenge for us, however, to show why it is worth the considerable investment to people who haven’t done it before. And in a wider perspective, this applies to all the new things we do, the new techniques and standards, the new concepts that we introduce. It’s a world that we don’t know, that is therefore hard to imagine. But hey, that’s exactly where a Fieldlab comes in: it makes the future imaginable. And a little less scary.
In Szymborska’s poem, the lingerers find themselves in fewer and fewer numbers left behind:
We struck ourselves as prudent,
petty, and ridiculous.In any case, our ranks began to dwindle.
The most impatient of us disappeared.
They’d left for the first trial by fire,
This much was clear,
especially by the glare of the real fire
they’d just begun to light
on the steep bank of an actual river.A few of them
actually turned back.
But not in our direction.
And with something they seemed to have won in their hands.