083: LD: Moist Vessel

Welcome! Thanks for joining me today. How often do you have to do things at work that you absolutely hate? The jobs that no one wants but have to be done? I imagine it happens to you on a pretty regular basis and maybe even more now than ever before. Well, good news! I’m going to share how you can work through those tasks and moments and actually enjoy them. And I get to do that by watching the 4^th episode of the 1^st season of Lower Decks, Moist Vessel.

<<Transporter>>

The Cerritos has teamed up with the USS Merced to relocate an ancient, generational ship for further study. Captain Freeman used to serve with the Captain of the Merced, Durango, who is a Tellarite. Tellarites are a race in Star Trek we really don’t dive into all that much but they are a founding member of the Federation. Well, here, there is a slightly less than friendly competitive spirit between the two of them. They’re going to sync up their tractor beams and drag the ship to a Starbase.

This ancient ship has this substance that allows for immediate terraforming and the Federation wants to learn more about it. It’s pretty fascinating stuff. Freeman and Durango are briefing the crews “Starfleet believes this vessel has unique terraforming technologies.” 00:54 And Mariner is very much showing her ‘best self.’ “Even the slightest flux, yawn.” 1:05 Freeman has Commander Ransom, the first officer, assign her terrible tasks, hoping she’ll get upset and request a transfer. Unfortunately, for them, it doesn’t work out quite the way they were hoping. “She’s finding joy.” 7:53

In the meantime, Tendi is going to attend an ascension. “Some people who master the art of meditation ascend!” 4:20 She joins a circle of people around Lt. O’Connor. He’s created a big ‘ol sand mandala and appears to be nearing his ascension. Until Tendi gets distracted by some of the decorations, dropping a gong and ruining his mandala. “I’ve been laying that for two years!” 5:43 Yeah, she screwed this all up and is now obsessed with making it right and helping him ascend; following him everywhere.

Feeling like they’re out of options, Freeman hits Mariner with the one thing she knows for sure she will hate. “Ensign Mariner, I promote you to Lt.” 8:51 This means staff meetings, hanging out with the senior staff and playing all their reindeer games. And she hates it.

The competitive spirit between Freeman and Durango continues and things do not go well. “We’re in charge of this mission.” 13:59 The Durango moves, unbalances the tractor beams and rips off a piece of hull plating. Some of the terraforming stuff travels across the tractor beams and starts lodging itself on the ships, aggressively growing plants and dissolving the hulls. It’s pandemonium as people try to find safety. Tendi and O’Connor end up in Engineering, trapped. He eventually sacrifices himself to save Tendi. And, this leads to his ascension! “I see Abraham Lincoln. The universe is balanced on the back of a koala.” 20:39

Mariner is able to figure out how to change the chemical makeup of the ship’s atmosphere and saves the day. Totally shuts down the terraforming. An admiral comes on board to recognize Freeman and Mariner for their bravery and ingenuity. Mariner can’t keep her mouth shut, making fun of how they say sensors, which gets her knocked back down to Ensign “I’m pretty good at getting demoted.” 23:33, and everything is back to normal.

<<Red Alert>>

I remember watching this when it first came out. I was still figuring out just what Lower Decks was, like most of the people watching it at the time. At the time I felt like it was too fast paced and was poking fun at a lot of Star Trek. Having seen it a few times now and have gotten a better grasp on the love letter to Star Trek that Lower Decks is, I enjoy this one a lot more. But if I’m being honest, this one was fun, but probably in the lower part of my Lower Decks rankings. Let’s look at why.

Quarks – Ads

I think I’ve said it before but it bears repeating here. Lower Decks is a full-length episode crammed into a half-hour. It move fast, a lot happens and there isn’t really any breathing room. This early in the series I was still getting used to the pace of it and it made it hard for me to really invest in it. But now, I see it so differently. Yes, it is fast paced but there actually is breathing room. This show leans in to being a cartoon so it revels in the effects and the possibilities sometimes. This episode absolutely had that. They spent chunks of time with the terraforming stuff that would have cost a fortune on a live action show and probably would have looked ridiculous. Here, it was great! Plus it gave us time to catch our breath while enjoying some action.

This show absolutely pokes at Star Trek tropes and this episode was no exception. One of my favorites was making fun of the way they say sens-oars. “Are you saying sens-oars?” 22:33 Back in the Original Series this is how Leonard Nimoy chose to say the word. There are a lot of myths out there about why, but regardless of which one is true, the word is part of the Trek zeitgeist. Nimoy had a Boston accent so some believe he said it this way to get over that. Others say it was a conscious choice just because it would sound different. Either way, a lot of characters have said it this way and Lower Decks is calling the franchise out on it.

And this one really made fun of TNG. Watching other officers perform theatre or music, going to each other’s birthdays and poker nights. We just talked about a TNG poker game in the 76^th episode of the podcast when we watched The Quality of Life. Since that episode I saw a great meme that has a screenshot of them playing poker saying Troi can sense your emotions, Geordi can see through your cards, Data can process a gazillion possibilities in a second, yet Riker is the best player out of the bunch. Games on the Cerritos, though, don’t really have the interpersonal development we saw in TNG. “This game’s about to get very interesting.” 10:45 And after that, literally everyone folds their hands.

What makes this work is they aren’t just making fun, the show is showing us that it’s in on the jokes. Like, we have all thought these things at different points and it’s the show saying, me too! Me too! I’m laughing at this too! I mean, how often have you thought about the holodeck and what people would actually, really use it for? “I’ve got her emptying stuff. That’s what they’re for?” 8:01Like, we all knew this, we just never really talked about it. Unless you’re one of the slash fiction writers out there that has made judicious use of this, and if that’s you, good on you and welcome. But it’s all a caring way to have fun with the audience and acknowledge some of the kind of ridiculous stuff we’ve tolerated and accepted in Star Trek for a very long time.

Ok, I said we were going to look at why this is not a favorite episode for me. First, there’s the whole ascension storyline that is really just meant to show us Tendi’s insecurity and need to be liked. But on the way they just kinda stepped on some really cool ideas. Tendi mentioned the ways different cultures achieved ascension which would have been cool but it was all played for laughs. And then, when dude finally does ascend they turn it into some joke about a koala. It just felt easy and kind of ridiculous. Now, if they go to the koala at some point and we learn about all this, that would be cool, but in this one, it was the entire B story and it just didn’t hold up.

Then there was the way they decided to show Mariner grating on Freeman’s nerves. “Mariner! Yawning” 1:26 Like, just not funny. The joke didn’t translate to TV well at all and, while I get what they were going for, it just really fell flat for me.

One thing I really liked in this one. I love it when a joke or story is underwhelming but the point was for it to be underwhelming. Like the Aristocrats joke – do not YouTube that with kids around. But it’s all build up, that can last a very long time, for a stupid punchline. But the real punchline is the buildup. Setting up your expectations for one thing and then going an entirely different direction.

At this point in the show, it is crystal clear that Boimler will do absolutely anything he needs to to get promoted. And when he sees Mariner get the pip and the pop to lieutenant he loses his mind. She breaks rules, halfways a lot of her work but then gets promoted. He can’t stand it. But he does learn. So he decides to try the same thing. “Gotta figure out a way to be bad.” 12:46 So this whole thing gets built up and we’re left to imagine what he’s going to do just for things to go wild with the terraforming stuff and him spilling coffee on Ransom. It’s so dumb but hilarious! His whole plan to be bad falls apart. He can’t win or lose! I loved this.

A fun episode that moves the Marnier, Freeman, mother, daughter stuff forward and has a pretty cool, little story about an ancient ship. Not bad at all, but not one I’m recommending to a first time viewer. Also, it’s called Moist Vessel and that’s just kind of gross.

<<Command Codes>>

We have to do stuff at work we don’t want to do. I like to joke that that’s why they give us money to show up. If we only ever got to do the cool stuff that we wanted to do, a lot of us would show up for free. I’m going show you how to find joy in those terrible things so when you have to do them, you can get through them doing a good job, but without losing your soul in the process. I’m also going to talk about identifying your boundaries around that too. There are absolutely situations we are put in at work that we either don’t want to be in, or should not be in at all.

After that, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite things. Treating the people you work with like trusted professionals and not like children.

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If money was no problem and you had all the time in the world, what would you do with yourself? This is a prompt I sometimes use with people I work with to flesh out their development plans, or with consulting clients to help them realize what their passion is. In theory, the answer to this question is your true calling. We have the jobs we have because of the salary, or our experience, or time available or other limiting factors. So what if there were no limits? No constraints?

If you’re like me, your first answer would be something like, play Xbox non-stop until the controller battery died, or, watch every episode of Star Trek, first in release order and then in timeline chronological order. But, while I would totally enjoy those things, that’s not how I would spend my time.

Drilling down a little more will get you some valuable feedback. Stuff like, I’d coach little league and help kids prep for college scouts. I’d volunteer at my kid’s school and help in the library. Maybe even host a podcast talking about cool stuff. But I’ll often drill down even further. You want to coach sports, that likely means you want to help people be better at a skill. Volunteering at a school, you might want to teach. Podcasting, that’s helping people too. You help drill down to the thing that excites a person and then focus on developing that.

In this episode I bring this up because, much like when we create and share vision, we have to live in two places at the same time. We have to be in the job we are in because of the paycheck or whatever, but we also have to identify and work to unlock the passion underneath it; the thing that excites us. Because if we can’t do that, we are going to end up miserable in our day-to-day, and no one wants that.

Mariner ends up in some pretty rough spots in this episode. She loves being an Ensign and doing the little stuff. She has fun, it’s low stakes and every now and then she gets to shine, like when she shows she’s super competent and can problem solve in big deal situations. But when that excitement gets taken away from her and “You get to audit, the audit. Staff meeting…” 10:02 she dies inside.

A big part of the premise for this episode is Freeman wanting Mariner off the ship but not having the courage, or the managerial skills, to hold her accountable and force the issue. Instead, she does what far too many managers do and passive-aggressively tries to make this Mariner’s problem. Her first go at this is having all the garbage work that no one wants to do get assigned to her. She thinks that if she does terrible tasks, she’ll get sick of it and ask for a transfer.

But that’s not what happens. No, you see, Mariner has a pretty good idea of what brings her excitement and that’s connecting with the people she works with. She finds ways to do that in all of the tasks she’s given and she is really enjoying herself.

Nir Eyal is an author and entrepreneur that participated as part of the TED How to Be a Better Human series. He does an incredible job explaining how to find enjoyment in the kind of tasks Mariner is assigned. She follows his advice, but you don’t really see it in action in the episode, you just see the result of it.

His secret is to pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things. Think of the barista that spends hours, days, months perfecting a roast, or the Star Trek writer that takes great pains to write loving callbacks to tropes through 800 plus hours of content. They bring a pride in mastery and a drive to do better to what they are doing.

Mariner does this. She isn’t halfway’ing her way through her work. No, she’s finding ways to demonstrate mastery and pride. When she’s cleaning carbon from slightly harder carbon, she doesn’t find a way to get it done quickly and do something else, no! She pulls a group of people together to challenge them to get the job done quickly and well. Not only is she finding a way to have fun and do her work well, but she’s involving others as well.

A big part of this is the nearly unconscious mindfulness she’s showing. Mindfulness is, put very simply, living in the now, this exact present moment. It’s not reflecting on the past or planning, or worrying, about the future. Mindfulness is now. There are mindfulness meditations out there, personally I have struggled with them but I continue to try, that have you simply exist. Notice your breathing. Feel the rub of the carpet on your ankle. Notice your muscles as they tense and relax. Like, literally just being aware of you at the exact second. No consideration, no contemplation. Just existing.

In mundane tasks this can look a lot of different ways. Personally, I hate folding laundry. All about washing and drying it, but I wish there was a magic button that would fold it, hang it up and put it all away. But there isn’t, so I am working to turn folding laundry into a mindfulness practice. Instead of sorting the clothes, planning for how many hangers I’ll need and in what order I’ll want my t-shirts to hang, you know, the cool t-shirts you can buy at starfleetleadership.academy/store. Instead of living a few minutes ahead of myself, I live in the right now. I feel the fabrics, I notice the threading on the buttons. I’m aware of how light or heavy different articles of clothing are. This focuses me, not on folding the laundry, which I hate, but on the interesting things happening right now. The things I let fly right past me when I’m worried about how many hangers I’m going to need.

Mariner does this. She isn’t worried about getting through her tasks so she can do something more fun. In fact, they never even bring up what she’s missing out on, just that these are supposed to be gross jobs. And we see it all pay off for her. “She’s finding joy.” 7:53

Now I want to look at the other side of this. There are things we are asked, or even expected, to do, that just aren’t ok. I’ve shared stories before from the supervisor job I had where we would literally hire 20 people on Monday and fire 20 on Friday, like clockwork. My co-worker and I started wearing black on Fridays and would spend a solid hour together, after work, commiserating because we just fired a whole bunch of people. It was awful, and it was wrong. The leadership there believed, and even stated, that there was no reason to get to know anyone that worked there. They were only as valuable as their production and if that got too low, there were a hundred people waiting in line to take their place. Abject inhumanity.

I went through some of these steps, though. I tried to find ways to enjoy the work, but I couldn’t. This was just morally reprehensible and wrong. So I left. Which is a whole lot easier to say now, nearly 20 years later, than it was to actually do at the time. Spoiler alert, though, it all worked out just fine. If this hit something for you, know that it will all turn out ok. For real.

I mentioned identifying your boundaries as to what and when it’s ok to work to find joy and excitement in tasks, and when they’re just not compatible with you. In Tendi’s ascension storyline we actually get a really solid example of how you can identify those boundaries. Sometimes it’s easy, you are asked to do something illegal or clearly immoral. Those are like the cement medians on the freeways; super obvious boundaries. But this example, and what I want to share with you, is seeing the less apparent ones.

Dude has been working for years to achieve ascension and Tendi ruins it. She pushes and pushes and eventually he breaks down and says all of this has been a lie. “I was faking. It’s hard to stand out on Starfleet.” 16:44 He gave up on who he really was, creating an entirely different persona, for the sole purpose of standing out and getting ahead. This, my friends, is the boundary. Compare this to Mariner and her approach to everything. At no point did she compromise who she was and she was able to have a good time. Dude was not, at all, having a good time. So when you find yourself having to be someone else, to give up who you are, know that you have reached a boundary and you need to start looking at this very differently.

As leaders, though, we also need to be aware of when we are actively encouraging others to be someone they’re not. This can show up when someone doesn’t jive with the work culture you’ve built or you’re asking for different skillsets or things like this, but it really all come back to you. How do you treat the people that work with you? Do you trust them to do the job they were hired for, or do you get in there and manage all the details of how they do their work?

I want to paint a picture for you. This is based on a company I did some consulting with, but this happens everywhere. And it is one of the biggest crimes we commit, on a daily basis, in our professional worlds.

This company was hiring for a developer with a very specific skillset. On top of understanding the language, having the appropriate certifications and other, objective, check the box or don’t check the box qualifications, they recruited for a few other, softer skills, that probably sound very familiar to you. Team player, collaborator, innovator. You know, all the buzz words we use to describe an individual contributor that is creative and attaches to the greater whole. A thing we all say we want.

They hired a person. Super qualified and even had great examples of how they had innovated in prior positions, improving productivity and all that great stuff. Fast forward about 3 months and the company has fired this person. Why? I have a good feeling you know why. This happens a lot out there. This person was fired because they questioned processes and, quote, distracted team members by talking about different ways of doing things, unquote. The person literally did the thing they were hired to do but management didn’t like that, so they fired them.

Mariner brings that up in this episode when she’s working with her Mom, Freeman, to get through the terraformed rock formations. “I’m just looking out for you. You’re treating me like a child.” 18:01 It’s not exactly the same, this isn’t her doing the thing she was hired for but butts up against management’s ego. But it is management thinking they know best.

Let’s look at the hiring example again, real quick. Management wants to have all the things the articles and TED talks tell us we need, so they ask for those things in the hiring process. But, day-to-day operations, they still believe they know better than the people doing the work, so when their processes or approaches are challenged, they don’t listen and learn, the remove the questions. It ties to the fatal disease so many managers have but aren’t even aware of: Ivory Tower Syndrome.

Now I don’t know if this is a real thing you’ll find in medical books or journals, or even the DSM, but it is, 100%, a disease that needs treatment. Put simply, Ivory Tower Syndrome, or ITS, is where people that do not do the work dictate how work is to be done. The symptoms of ITS range from dissatisfaction from employees, to high defect rates, to lost productivity all the way to outright, active disengagement of the people you work with and terrible service delivery. Fighting those 1-star google and Yelp reviews? Have a bunch of entries on Glassdoor? Yeah, you might be suffering from Ivory Tower Syndrome.

But there is good news! This is not the end for you! ITS is not a terminal disease if it is identified and treated. And the treatment? Stop treating your team like children!! You hire a person to write code, let them write code! You hire for innovation, let people innovate! Here’s a thing I’ve done that keeps me on track and help the managers I work with understand their role: any time you become directly involved in the work itself, either doing it or making a non-emergency, operational decision about it, consider that a failure of leadership and an opportunity. This could be an opportunity for you to step back and truly trust your team. It could be an opportunity to help build the competence of the people on the team.

In the 68^th episode of the podcast where we watched the original, animated series episode The Infinite Vulcan, I talked about David Marquet’s concept that the level of control given to people over their work is the direct result of the level competence and clarity they have. When you are inserted into the actual work, you likely need to provide more clarity in the work or more competence in doing it.

As a leader you are hiring skilled people to do the important work of your organization. Let them do the work. Acknowledge their skill, ensure they know and understand the mission and values that your work is done in and then follow the single, most important piece of advice I have ever given: get out of their way.

<<Hailing Frequencies>>

One of my favorite things is when I get to read the reviews that you leave for the show. Apple Podcasts, Goodpods, Podchaser, wherever you leave them, I love reading them. If you haven’t already, head into your podcast listening app and leave a review for the show. I just might read it on an upcoming episode.

And when you do leave the review, take a screenshot and share it on social media. I’m on Twitter and Mastodon: @ SFLA podcast and Instagram, @jefftakin Jeff, t as in Terraforming, a k i n.

Computer, what are we going to watch next time….

The 12^th episode of the 1^st season of Deep Space 9, Vortex. This is an early Odo episode where travelers from the Gamma Quadrant claim to know about his people. I think the aliens in this one have a cool, uniquely alien thing about them too. I don’t really remember but all too often aliens in Star Trek are really just humans with some uncomfortable makeup and I remember this one going a little deeper than that. I’m eager to find out if I’m remembering right and I’m excited to do that with you!

Until then, Ex Astris Scientia!