A sort of frenzy takes your brain when you do not sleep. Nervous energy takes over and you become brittle in your transactions. Overly bright, tense faced, or distrait, incoherent, unable to respond to the world in a flexible way, where you able to observe and act at the same time. This frenzy also prevents calming sleep and it can take a while to get back into a healthy pattern.
I have been at some of my work transactions like a bull in a china shop, ineffective because insufficiently calming. An ordering at, rather than a working with. And regardless of whether some people can do that, because of their personality, that is not me, and I can only ever do it because of my role, and these specific transactions were not with people I can just tell what to do.
The latter is a question of politics and how one gets things done in an organisation. People need to be willing, able and within the correct organisational hierarchy. And if you haven’t got that you can’t get things done. Willingness can be created by trust, or by building coalitions, ability is whether they have the right tools, responsibilities and of course personal capabilities, and the organisational hierarchy is a question of who you go to to get that specific thing done.
I am not very good at these behaviours, if I’m honest.
Still, sometimes one must just push ahead regardless, and this is one of those situations.
It is that Clausewitzianfriction – “the way, broadly speaking, the world pushes back when we push forward”. You need mechanisms to manage that friction.