088: VOY: The Fight

Welcome! Thanks for joining me today. Is your plate full? Does your cup runneth over? Do you ever feel like everything in front of you is either someone else’s problem or, worse, unsolvable? Well, good news! We’re about to see that happen, right here, in a Star Trek episode! Plus, I’m going to share how you can handle those things too as we watch the 19^th episode of the 5^th season of Voyager, The Fight.

<<Transporter>>

The Voyager is in chaotic space. This is a weird zone where the laws of physics don’t quite apply. Now, chaotic space isn’t a place, it’s more of an event or a phenomenon that randomly occurs. And when it does occur, it can wreak havoc, “If we don’t find a way out soon, we’re going to die here.” 0:41

Commander Chakotay is in a bad way. He’s hearing voices and isn’t generally doing very well. He’s in sickbay and the Doctor is monitoring him. He tells Chakotay that there are aliens trying to communicate with him. Possibly aliens that understand this part of space. But they’re communicating in a way Chakotay can’t understand. The Doctor thinks he knows what’s going on and asks Chakotay to remember a recent boxing simulation he did in the holodeck. “The fight was going badly, I was avoiding my opponent.” 3:58 His cornerman is Boothby! A groundskeeper and Mickey, all in one! Fight wasn’t going well for him and after awhile, some weird, geometric shape thing appears behind his opponent. Distracted, he gets knocked right off his feet.

As Chakotay reflects on the fight and remembers the weird, geometric distortion, The Doctor finds some stuff going on in his visual cortex. He gets called to the bridge before they can explore. Voyager is tracking, and being chased, by a phenomenon. A kind of distorted space. It envelops them and this is where things start to fall apart. “The readings are shifting too rapidly.” 9:47 Seven meets with Janeway. The Borg have encountered this before and they call it chaotic space. It’s random and moves around the galaxy. In the history of the Borg, only one Cube has ever survived an encounter. Things aren’t looking good for Voyager.

And not so good for Chakotay either. He keeps hearing things, hearing things from his boxing match. No one else can hear it, seems it’s all in his head. Tuvok and Paris get him to Sickbay where The Doctor finds Chakotay has a genetic, cognitive disorder, “The primary symptoms are hallucinations.” 14:25 The gene was suppressed before he was born, but, somehow, it has been switched on. The Doctor and Janeway believe this is because of chaotic space.

The crew gets the sensors online and they set a course to try and escape. They come across the hull of another ship. No life signs. The logs make it sound like someone on that crew is going through something similar to Chakotay, “Why do the stars make such a noise.” 17:07 Took a year before they all died. They couldn’t find a way out and ran out of supplies. Not very encouraging.

Chakotay goes on a vision quest which ramps up his hallucinations, which is pretty awesome, because they figure out what’s going on! “The aliens were in there!” 21:44 These aliens live in chaotic space and are trying to help Voyager out! They were trying to help the other ship too. A whole bunch of Treknobabble ensues and they figure out how to adapt their engines to escape. Except it’s all in the alien’s geometry. He gets into another vision. A very, very long sequence of him in a ring, then training, then being on Voyager, then getting conditioning, then more training, then chatting with his grandpa, then back in the ring and then he wakes up. It’s like they tried to do the whole orb experience thing from DS9 and just didn’t quite hit the mark.

Janeway and Seven locate a signal within chaotic space designed to alter DNA and activate genes. It’s what’s impacting Chakotay. Everyone is on board now that this is intentional and someone is trying to communicate. “What if those hallucinations are a way for the to communicate?” 36:19 So he goes back in, this time knowing what he’s facing and what he needs to figure out. “You are far from home…” 39:44 All the sequences from the vision come together and start making sense. He’s in the boxing vision and he’s successfully communicating! They explain what they need to do to escape chaotic space. Chakotay understands it and sets to work. After a tense few moments, they set out on the course he determined and “we’ve reentered normal space.” 43:19 They’re back on their way and Chakotay takes the next few days off to recover. Which, kind of weirdly, he chooses to spend boxing, because, you know, this was such an important part of his character before and came up again so many times…

<<Red Alert>>

Star Trek, like a lot of sci fi, is full of really cool ideas. I mean, finding a lifeform that exists in a different form and communicates in an entirely alien way is fascinating. It’s even kind of cool. There are so many things they can do with a story and concept like that. But did The Fight do those cool things? Let’s go the judges!

Quarks – Ads

A lot of you know that I worked in professional wrestling for a long time. Right up to the COVID response. Actually, me stopping my work in pro wrestling is what led to this podcast starting! I bring that up here for a couple of reasons. First, I want to talk about how they handled the boxing ring. A little about boxing rings first. Also called the squared circle, just like we called it in wrestling, it’s this solid steel structure of 4 posts, 4 beams that connect the posts in a square and then 2 to 3 beams that run parallel through the middle. Sheets of plywood are laid across the beams with some sort of light padding on top; sometimes carpet padding, sometimes foam. Almost always quite thin. Then the string a canvas over the top. The 4 posts are connected by 3 ropes above the canvas that enclose the ring. In boxing this just defines the boundaries. In wrestling, you can do all kinds of cool stuff with them. Most boxing rings that you see on TV are 20 feet by 20 feet. Some as big as 24 feet and some as small as 16, but 20 is the standard.

It's a ring like this we see in the early and the final scenes of Chakotay in there. Very normal. Small, but clearly a training ring. Then we go into his hallucinations, or vision, or phone call with the aliens, whatever you want to call it. In there, it’s a 3-sided ring. A triangle! Rings with sides other than 4 aren’t uncommon. TNA, when it started had a 6-sided ring, just like AAA in Mexico, and, of course, UFC uses the octagon, but this is the first time I’ve seen a 3-sided ring. It was great for forcing an odd perspective. Even if you weren’t looking at the dimensions of the ring like me, it still felt off, just not quite right. I thought that was super cool.

I also bring up my pro wrestling experience because I take issue with The Doctor in this episode. He goes on and on, many times, about the barbaric nature of boxing. And while on the surface he’s not entirely wrong, I mean look at the laundry list of traumatic brain injuries suffered by fighters. Or just look at Muhammad Ali! The absolute GOAT and dude can’t tie his own shoes. That said, I truly believe combat sports are the purest expression of art and competition imaginable.

The first two sports ever were running and wrestling. Running from what’s going to kill you, and fighting something, or someone, to kill it. There are cave paintings of racing and wrestling that date back over 15,000 years! In 7,000 BC the cave paintings had crowds watching the wrestling contests. There isn’t anything in these sports other than you and your opponent, and in racing, sometimes your opponent is the clock. But in both instances, your biggest opponent is yourself. I’ll talk more about that in the command codes. As time went on, other sports also followed this paradigm. Swimming and Archery show up in cave paintings around 10,000 BC.

Some of you are thinking right now that swimming, archery and running are a lot different than combat sports and I totally agree. You are a lot less likely to break a bone or get a concussion doing those sports. And while running and swimming can push a person to their limit, they can’t do it quite the same way combat sports does it. You fight for every breath because you don’t necessarily know if you’ll get another one. You have to best yourself while staying on guard and defending against an opponent.

When done with rules, and with respect and honor, combat sports are beautiful. Many classic martial arts follow this model. As do Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling. I want to highlight these against boxing or even martial arts because there is no striking in these forms of wrestling. Grappling is what they do. An exchange of holds, counter-holds and reversals. Yes, injury is a possibility, but not to the extent getting punched in the face repeatedly can cause. No, in wrestling, it’s just two people, often in peak physical condition, giving their all; grappling with their opponent and fighting with themselves. It beautiful.

In fact, that’s why professional wrestling, now, at the end of 2023, is a multi-billion dollar industry. WWE recently sold to Endeavor, which also owns UFC, for a whopping $9.3 billion! That’s billion with a B! People love this stuff, even if they won’t admit it, because it combines this primal, natural struggle that has played out in wrestling matches for over 15 millennia, with the universally desired story of good vs evil. It’s Shakespeare in the Round. It transcends culture and language. The nuances may be different, but you will find pro wrestling in every corner of the world and it will look familiar anywhere you go. Heck, it’s catholic church of entertainment!

So, The Doctor isn’t entirely wrong. Boxing is a dangerous sport. But it isn’t barbaric. In fact, it, and the other combat sports, may be the purest expression of our humanity that is possible. And I’m sure a couple thousand of you are screaming at your phone right now about how wrong and ridiculous I am, and that’s cool. Totally fine. But I think you’re mad because you know I’m right…

Kidding! Ok, back to the episode. Two little bits of trivia on this one. First, we get a Chakotay vision quest. “A-koo-chee-moya.” 19:37 Most people feel one way or another about those, but they are a thing in Voyager so I wanted to point it out. And second, do you remember our old pal, Boothby? He showed up in TNG and in Voyager, even recently, kind of, in Lower Decks. He’s the groundskeeper at Starfleet Academy that mentors all the up and comers. Well, this is his final appearance in live action Star Trek. Who knew he was a brilliant cornermen on top of being an awesome groundskeeper and mentor. Wonder why they don’t have an Emergency Boothby Hologram to help out on starships. Hmmm.

It was in this episode, though, that he may have given his most valuable nugget of wisdom. His most lasting and impactful piece of advice when he called Chakotay, “Chakotay, the Maquis Mauler.” 6:51

Yeah, this episode was basically garbage. A cool idea, but totally dropped the ball on execution. I was bored and confused, not a good combination. Poor Robert Beltran had just a few days to prep for this! And, despite his best efforts, it shows. Aside from the cool stuff I’m about to share, I’d call this one a hard skip.

<<Command Codes>>

Leaders have so many things flying at them at the same time. It can be overwhelming. Other people’s problems often, somehow, become your problem. People come to you for solutions and who better to give the unsolvable problems to than you, the highly effective leader. I’m going to share how Janeway handles this with grace and with wild efficacy. I’ll show you how you can do the same. But first, I want to pick up on a topic I talked about a little earlier. The question of, who are you fighting? Your opponent, or your problem or issue, or are you fighting yourself?

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Earlier I said that the greatest thing Boothby ever did was dub Chakotay the Maquis Mauler. That’s a fun thing to say. Maquis Mauler. But, it really wasn’t the best thing he ever said. In fact, he said a thing in this very episode that just might take that title, “That’s the contest. It’s against your desire not to get hurt.” 5:15 So often in our lives, both our at work lives and our real lives, we feel like we’re facing some adversary. A powerful opponent of some kind. When we have a budget proposal to make, for example, we might see the CFO or even your manager as an obstacle to overcome; an enemy to defeat. And while, yes, you ultimately need them to make a decision, and hopefully that decision is to approve, what you really need to is take on yourself and be sure you’re giving your best.

I have an example on this that I love sharing, but I’m going to save that for a few minutes. Before I get to that, and, just to tease it a little, it’s a story that absolutely, 100% reframed and reshaped my entire approach to leadership and maybe even living my life. But that’s in a little bit. First, I want to take Boothby’s question and personalize it a little more. I want to draw from real life a little here. At our core, we’re all really just super cool versions of ourselves that want to do awesome things. Deep down we’re not bothered by responsibilities, bills, deadlines, relationships, kids, traffic, internet outages, waiting forever for the next season of Star Trek to drop, wondering if we remembered to match our belt to our shoes, hoping there’s an open seat on the train in the morning, or having enough time to focus on and listen to the latest episode of the Starfleet Leadership Academy. Nope, we’re just little dreamers wrapped in shells that worry about all of those things.

My question, though, and really what Boothby’s question is too, is, why aren’t we out achieving those dreams we have? Why are we focused on all those other things, often moving our dreams to the said. Maybe next year, we’ll say. Or, I’ll go for that thing after I pay this other thing off. Or whatever creative excuse we come up with. The reason we avoid those dreams is because we’re fighting the context against the construct of life in our society instead of fighting the fears we have and our desire to not get hurt. Chakotay is doing everything right in his sparring session in this scene. His opponent isn’t landing any punches and he’s staying competitive when he should be taking some hits to tire the dude out so he can drop him. It’s a sound strategy that has worked a lot of times, it’s even worked for Boothby. But Chakotay doesn’t do it. Why? Because it hurts to take those hits and he doesn’t want to get hurt.

You know that you need to do x, y and z to accomplish the thing you really want to, but that might mean taking some hits. Maybe it means losing an income while you focus on the thing. Maybe it means skipping out on the fantasy league this year so you have the time you need. Maybe it means walking away from the comfortable life you’re living right now. All of those things hurt, and we do not want to hurt.

Here's the big question I pose to you then. What hurts more? Missing your fantasy league or never writing that book? Scrimping and saving or never developing that app or pulling together your startup? Living a comfortable life or never knowing what it would be like to live your dream life? What are you avoiding because you’re afraid of getting hurt? Answer that question and then ask the big one. Does it hurt more to lose the thing you’re holding on to, or does it hurt more to never achieve or accomplish the thing you think and dream about all the time?

Wow. I’m not sure if that was motivational or depressing. I suppose the answer to that really shows what fight we’re fighting at the moment, right? Oof. I’m gonna sit with that for a minute.

My next topic rolls out of that. Ok, this is where my example comes into play. This is a time when I was fighting the right fight, but my goal was misdirected. I wasn’t really fighting for the right reason, or, I guess more that I didn’t understand what the real purpose of the fight was.

The year was 2009. A young and idealistic Jeff Akin was participating in his first state legislative session. It was the beginning of a storied career that is actually still going on. There were a series of bills that were intended to improve the quality of life and care in long-term care facilities. To this day I believe all of the bills were intended to do good; none of them wanted to hurt anyone. But you remember that saying about roads being paved with good intentions? Yeah, this is a great example of that. I’m not going to go into specific detail on this because right now, at the end of 2023 as I record this, I am still working to clean up the impacts from one of these bills so, hopefully, there will be a final chapter to this story, yet to be written, that is happy for everyone.

One of the bills in this package that, again, with the best of intentions, was going to, and has, hurt a lot of people. It created absolutely unrealistic standards that dramatically reduced the amount of people that could, or would want to, provide care in these settings. These are nursing facilities, in-home care, assisted living facilities; things like that. My job was to put together data and help lobbyists tell the stories that would either support or oppose these bills. And I was able to beautifully illustrate that with this specific bill. Now, maybe spoiling the end of this story a little bit, that was the fight I should have focused on. Instead, I fought the fight to stop this bill from passing. And my opponent? An up and coming state representative that had hung their political hat on this particular bill. And to be fair, this bill did do some really positive things, but it unintentionally set up these unrealistic standards. So, it’s literally Jeff vs the massive political aspirations of a well-respected legislator.

As an aside, this whole experience was super valuable. I learned so much and got so much practice in how our legislative processes actually work. And here’s how it went. I put together reports, forecasts, graphs, pictures. I rounded up experts and the people impacted. We crafted testimony that would tell the story behind the data I gathered because facts tell, but stories sell. I ended up in this legislator’s office having less formal discussions, asking questions and trying to help them understand the impacts. This went on for almost 5 months. Lots of hearings on the bill and I felt really good about the work I had done. Remember, though, this is my first legislative session; I’m just now starting to understand how all of this works.

The bill passes out of committee. That was disappointing, but not unexpected. This legislator had a lot of influence over the committee. In fact, in the next session she became chair of it. So then it goes to the floor for the vote that matters. Fails to pass, it’s dead. Passes, pending the governor’s signature, it becomes law. I had worked my butt off. Built relationships across every political line you can imagine. So I was eager to watch this bill die a brutal death. Childishly, I was looking forward to seeing the representative’s face when it went down. Not a good look, I know, but, like I said, I was so young.

The roll is called and the votes are being cast. No, No, Aye, Aye, Aye…wait…there are a lot of aye’s going on here. I’m sure that’s ok. There’s another no, and another one. Ok, cool. Just a small group of supporters…nope, more aye’s! And they keep coming…NO!!! It passed!!!! I can’t believe it. I am flabbergasted, blown away, furious, and, well, and hurt. I couldn’t believe it. I started beating myself up. Where did I mess up. Should I have said a thing I didn’t say? Did I miss the right person to bring up and testify? How did I fail? How did I lose the fight?

One of the lobbyists I worked with called me a few minutes after the vote. They had been doing this stuff for a long time. In fact, they retired just a few years after this. But he calls and asks how I’m doing. “How am I doing? Terrible! Can you believe this. I’m sorry. I totally failed.” And he says, oh, this is where the awesome starts in this story, he says, “Hm, I didn’t realize you voted on this bill.”

Um, no. Of course I didn’t. I’m not a legislator.

Well, you sure sound like you think you did. Let me ask you this. Did you have a vote or were you the one that made the bill pass?

No.

What did you do? What were you responsible for?

Telling the story. Gathering and sharing the data. Making the justifiable case that this is bad law.

Did you do that?

Yeah. I did.

And you did it really well. That sounds like a win to me.

He helped me see that we can only control what we can control. And when we know what we can control, we can measure and actually be successful.

It’s really about choosing which fight you’re going to fight and how much of yourself you’re going to invest in those fights as a leader. We have a lot of stuff flying at us all the time. In fact, when people tell me they want to get into management I ask them why. And not in the, why do you want to pursue this career path kind of way. More in the, why would you want to do that to yourself kind of way. Depending on how old they are, I’ll ask them if they remember that game Asteroids. You know the one. You’re a little spaceship and a bunch of asteroid rock looking things are floating towards you. You either blow them up, or they blow you up. But I ask if they remember it and if they do I tell them that management is like being that little ship but you can only actually destroy some of the asteroids, but all them can blow you up. Your job is to determine which ones you can take out and which ones you just need to ignore and stay out of the way of.

This is a really nerdy way of saying control what you can control, or, control the controllables. You’ve probably heard this before, it has become a very common platitude, but most people don’t practice this at all. They might say it, but then they focus on and freak out over the asteroids they can’t destroy.

This phrase has its roots in the Stoic philosopher Epicetus’ Enchiridion where he introduces the dichotomy of control. That dichotomy is to control the controllables, thus, the saying, and let go of things you cannot control. That’s pretty profound, yeah? I mean, think about it. All of the things that are outside of your control: what other people think of us, the results of an election – or vote on a bill – fluctuating market conditions, the weather, your placement in chaotic space, you project manager resigning in the middle of a project, the lunch rush on a Tuesday afternoon. I mean, this list can go on for hours. Days even. And according to Epicetus, there are exactly two things we have control over: our voluntary actions and how we think about things. In the 85^th episode of the podcast, Enterprise Anomaly, I go into more detail and share some strong anecdotes on this concept. Today, though, I want to talk about how you can channel your inner Janeway; focusing on what you have control over in the face of a crisis.

Let me paint the picture. Voyager is cruising along when, bam! They find themselves in the middle of an anomaly, chaotic space, that defies all the laws of physics and logic we have all come to accept. The ship is all but lost and it is pandemonium. The crew is studying readouts, scanning things, doing sensor stuff, you know, all the Star Trek things. In the middle of all of this, Janeway is cool as can be. She’s isn’t freaking out or yelling or running all over the place. No, she’s in the astrometrics lab, reviewing objective data even though the people around her are starting to spiral. It goes like this, “Changes in the gravitational coefficient…Let’s get sensors up and running.” 10:35 It’s basically a zoo that’s on fire around her and she parses through all the smoke and noise to find what they have control over. She also focuses the team on value-added activity which will help them be more calm and focused instead of running around, trying to stack marbles in a corner.

Here are some strategies that you can put into place that will help you show up the way Captain Janeway does here. First, be aware of and clarify what is actually controllable. Communicate this with your team. Now is not the time to be keeping secrets; transparency is key. Then like in the clip, focus on actionable tasks. What can actually be done in the moment that is helpful? Encourage the team with small and achievable goals. In the clip, Janeway doesn’t tell them to go scan this and analyze that. She just directs them to get the sensors up and running. When they achieve those goals, celebrate! Wins matter and by celebrating them, you are demonstrating the value in controlling what can be controlled.

And, overall, empower your teams to problem solve without you being directly involved. Trust them. Let them do the things you’ve hired them to do and that they are so very capable of doing. This also allows you to focus on the bigger picture. What is working, what isn’t, what needs to be adjusted. Is anything new a controllable thing or is something now outside of your control. To stay on the example from Janeway, let’s say the sensor array gets blown off the ship and is now scattered across chaotic space. Those sensors are not a controllable for you anymore. Because you have empowered the people you work with, they’re off doing all the great things while you adapt and asjust based on the changing conditions. Sensors literally do not exist? No longer a controllable. What is the next controllable thing we can shift out focus to? And then you follow the strategy again. You’ve just clarified, or re-clarified what is controllable. You can develop, with the help of your team, small and actionable tasks, and then celebrate!

In a very real way this lines up with the PDCA cycle. PDCA is Plan, Do, Check Act. First you plan what you’re going to do, then you do it, then you check in on how well the thing you are doing achieves your goals, then you act on what you learn from the checking. Then the cycle continues. Plan, based on the new information, Do the stuff you planned, Check how it’s going, and Act on the feedback from Checking what you’ve been doing. PDCA. It’s a powerful tool.

So you can channel your inner Janeway, or Epicetus, or whomever works for you. By focusing yourself, and your team, on what you can control, you too will find your way out of chaotic space.

<<Hailing Frequencies>>

This is releasing just after the Thanksgiving holiday so I want to thank you. The fact you are hearing this right now means so much to me. I appreciate the fact that you allow me to combine two of my passions: solid leadership and Star Trek. So, thank you for being here.

With us being in the heart of the holiday season, I want to ask you to do me, and the podcast, a huge favor. Share the show. Know someone that would benefit from the lessons or would enjoy the take on Star Trek? Share it with them. Do you work with someone that is aspiring to leadership or is new in a leadership role? Share the podcast with them. Do you have a terrible boss that makes you hate coming into work every day? Share this with them too. Whatever app you are listening in has a share button. Just click it. Click it now. Pull over or park or get to a safe spot, get your phone out and share. You could be making a significant impact on someone’s career and you will absolutely be supporting the Starfleet Leadership Academy.

You can also share my social medias with people. I’m on Twitter and Mastodon: @ SFLA podcast and Instagram and Threads, @jefftakin Jeff, t as in The Maquis Mauler, a k i n.

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

The 11^th episode of the 2^nd season of The Original Series, The Deadly Years. If you’re familiar with TOS, you know this episode! It’s the one when the crew all get old. It’s an early look at Star Trek’s old makeup, which does not go well in the early TNG attempts. I’m looking at you, Too Short a Season. The crew’s lives are on the line in this high stakes episode. I curious to see what leadership skills are highlighted as they work through this and I’m even more excited to do that with you!

Until then, Ex Astris Scientia!