Redeeming your IoUs at workplace
IoUs are a beautiful concept. When looked at from one angle, it really is a reason why the world moves forward. I do something nice for you without expecting anything in return right away. A small mountain of debt is built in your head for me. A good debt. Because now I inevitably become a nice person for you. This pattern when repeated makes the world a better place.
Of course, this is assuming IoUs are not saddled by ill intentions.
IOUs keeps piling up until one of the following happens
- I become your favourite person
- I am taken for granted OR
- You try hard not to favour me because of the IOU. In an intent not to show favouritism, you overcompensate and ensure that I am treated unfairly. (Or maybe that was always the inevitable result?)
Why do we do IOUs at the workplace? Why must I go over and above what I am doing if I am getting paid for my 9 hours of work with you? Why must I be ok to pick up that call at 12 in the night, or send that email doing my colleague’s job (primarily because they suck at their job and someone needs to do it)? I did it because I was personally driven by wanting to close the gaps, being passionate about my job and doing what is needed to move the needle forward and take the company to the next level. While it sounds normal, these extra-mile things are actually IoUs.
Who do I owe? The ones whose vision I was spending my days and nights fulfilling. A regular work transaction says you pay me for my 9 hours, I choose to go above and beyond for nothing more than what is signed and I do this because I want to and somewhere in my heart and mind, I hope that I have signed that IoUs with you with that invisible ink.
The transaction of an IoU is interesting. If it were written down, then it would become a give-and-take. It is the nature of the invisibility of the iou that makes it special. But with invisibility comes a large room for inference. How does one quantify how big/small the deed done? Had I given something in return for this, our costs/fees would have been similar. But now you have done something for me that cannot be measured directly. In some parts of India, I have heard a variation of IoU when my parents would decide how expensive a wedding gift should be. The analysis was done on the foundation of ‘how much did they do for us’. Doesn’t matter if you are well off now or are poor, what you do in return is equal to what they did for you. While this is not a direct IoU, in some form it does have a delayed closure of an open transaction.
But this is the issue with IOU. It is invisible. Signed with invisible ink and the fine print is most likely a lopsided set of expectations. When I break the usual boundaries to do something for a client, in my mind, I have built an IOU which I hope someday will be fulfilled in kind. I truly believe that they would get banked one day and someday I would earn the benefits of it. But one turned to two, and two to 4, to double digits until you stop keeping count. One because you don’t have any fingers left to keep track but also because there was a hidden pattern emerging that your subconscious mind was smart enough to pick but your pre-frontal ignored. Ignored until one day, your gut slaps you on your face with a whack. The sound that comes if you were to take a wet fish and slap it across(Imaginative).
<iframe src=”https://giphy.com/embed/SsoQlxzXzTEi8vUXb4" width=”480" height=”480" style=”” frameBorder=”0" class=”giphy-embed” allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href=”https://giphy.com/gifs/pudgypenguins-fish-slap-fishing-SsoQlxzXzTEi8vUXb4">via GIPHY</a></p>
Believe it or not, IOUs do come back to bite and in a very ugly way. The invisible nature of these transactions most often in this world ends up being like every one-sided relationship — unacknowledged or unanswered. Even if the other party were to acknowledge that there was a lot that was done, there would be no scope for redeeming your ious because in the nature of business, a give and take rarely happens outside a written contract. Your boss will replace you no matter how well your job was and how much you went over and above, at the moment someone more lucrative and attractive comes through that door. You will receive a blueberry cake to thank you for your service with a few words from your colleagues but that’s all that remains. You can’t expect anything back. Because the core part of the expectation of fulfilling an IoU is laid on the fragile foundation of an unsaid and unsigned expectation. If I spent more hours working for the benefit of the company, would my expectations of how I need to be treated happen? If the other party has succumbed to the blind eye of ignoring you, then the ious just become ‘ met expectations’. Wasn’t this what was expected of me?
IOUs are also delicate for the reason that it is linked to a person who is aware of the context. The person with who this transaction stayed is the one who knows that this happened. In this unpredictable shifting people-based engagement, the person may be out of the door and a new person who has zilch knowledge may come in. And ious seldom are a part of the KT sessions.
Sometimes the least that can be expected in return for an IOU could be gratitude and respect. But then the peaky nature of IoUs, you could as well be exaggerating how much you have done, because there really is no objective value marked to that. So maybe it is a perception. Now imagine how easy is it for someone else to downplay your contribution or the other way, maybe you are blowing it out of proportion than what it really was. Don’t we all like some spotlight and shouts for attention?
I have come to realise that these IOUs are best done when redeemed hot. I took the approach of being firm with a client who constantly kept playing the payment loopholes in their favour. I was always told by my boss, to give them the benefit of the doubt because ‘IOU’. When we were losing out on revenue, it was far more important to be the giver for the sake of the relationship. Cos ious help one day. In my remaining 3 years with that org, the IOUs never got redeemed.
In the complex equation of multiple variables in the business world, where relationships are also strangely governed by signed contracts, ious may be a great place to save someone and give them that $5 bill as shown in The Pursuit of Happyness movie. But I have come to see that it is also important to be aware that $5 may not come back ever and that if it does, you just thank your karma and move on to the next IoU. I don’t think IoU’s make a lot of difference in the stakeholder relationship unless you want to be seen as a giver which seldom works in a contract-driven relationship. Nevertheless, even after so many lost IoUs and many more that just vaporised away due to change in people or lack of acknowledgement from the other party, or the ones that I just did not get an opportunity to redeem, I would still live by IoUs. Not because someday I hope to redeem them. but because they help me sleep better at night knowing I had the ability to make someone’s workplace a tad better and that I did.
