The Chasm Between "Done" and "It's Working"

I had to replace the electronic igniter on our Weber Grill. In a few days we’re going to have 31 of my wife’s family staying at our house for a week. (Don’t ask.) And we need the grill to work. Of course, I knew the igniter was going out for a few weeks. In fact, I bought a replacement part for it in September. Good old September, when it was warm outside and it would have been so convenient to just go out there and replace the igniter. You know the saying: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I put another brick in the walkway.

Fast forward to this morning. My deck and everything on it is covered in an inch of ice. It’s a Dr. Zhivago scene come to life in my back yard. It’s 26F here in Philly this morning; and the sun isn’t shining on the north side of my house. All totaled: It’s cold. And I wished that I had installed that igniter earlier in the season.

I had to make 15 trips in and out of the house to get various tools — and at one point to read the instructions. (Men…ugh, that Y-chromosome is not our friend.) My mother-in-law, who is in town from Arizona, sat at the kitchen table and saw all the to-and-fro that I did. Finally, I came in for the last time.

“Done?” asked my mother-in-law.

“Yeah, I’m done,” I said.

“Does it work?”

I laughed for two minutes. “That’s a good question to ask,” I said. “When it comes to doing a project like that, there’s a big difference between being done and it working.”

And isn’t that how it always goes? Being done in HR — or in business in general — isn’t the same thing as it working. There’s a chasm between the two. Checking the check boxes that says a project is complete is not the same thing as a project doing what it was intended to do.

The igniter on my grill works now, by the way. It would have been a lot easier to do in September. But it works.

About the Author

Frank Roche

Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.

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