Ego-less Analysis

“I have also been working on motives (Process 2). Have a look at this.”

I showed her the products of my analysis of motives based on the conversations I had conducted with everyone as part of Process 1.

Name	Motives	Other factors
Lord Todd	None identified so far.	Doesn’t care about his staff. Has as little to do with them as possible.
Arthur Court	None identified so far.	Not well liked by other staff, but not hated.
Brian Bates	Lost c£1,500 to Arthur playing cards. Disliked Arthur.	Ex-army. Knows how to fight and has experience of it.
Connor Chambers	Lost c£2,000 to Arthur playing cards.	Ex-army. Knows how to fight and has experience of it.
Danny D’Eath	Wants a relationship with Erica…Arthur knew about this and could have told Lord Todd. It is against the rules of employment for staff to have romantic relationships. Arthur had never said or hinted he would though. May have known (from Erica) that Arthur may have liked Erica as well.	Ex-army. Knows how to fight and has experience of it.
Erica Echoes	Wants a relationship with Danny…Arthur knew about this (see Danny). Erica thinks that Arthur liked her as well.	Erica knew that Arthur was sneaking out some evenings (breaking his employment contract). Hasn’t told anyone including Danny.
Frank Flowers	Grows and sells fruit and veg on Lord Todd’s land but sells some for personal profit. Arthur knew and could have told Lord Todd and threatened to. Arthur teased Frank about his employment position (Arthur thought Frank has the lowest status job of the employees). Arthur had “landed” Frank in trouble a couple of times with Lord Todd.
Gareth Garfield	None identified so far.	Kept from Lord Todd that he has a spent conviction for mugging (15 years ago). Unknown if Arthur knew but could have done…

“You’ve left a motive out,” said Ms D.

“Have I?”

“Yes: Lord Todd is – to an extent – paranoid…I should know…TripleA gets good business from Lord Todd because of it.”

“Fair enough. Could go under 'other factors' I suppose….”

“No: the fact that he is paranoid means his reasoning will be suspect and that leads to possible motive, doesn’t it? And, even if he is not paranoid but has good reason for such tight security, well…he has not told you about that, and that in itself is worrying from a motives perspective.”

Wham! She had me there, She was right, no doubt of that. Now that she had said it I could see that I had been suppressing it: you don’t really want to include in your deliverables documents information that could be taken the wrong way by the very person who is paying your invoice. “Could be taken the wrong way”? Who am I kidding? Lord Todd would go stratospheric if he read that in my analysis.

I was (to coin a phrase) caught between a rock and a hard place…Rock: Ms D’s reasoning was correct – Lord Todd was paranoid (or under real threat of some sort he was keeping to himself) and so could have a motive. Hard place: putting it in the report would result in at the very least an “interesting” chat with Lord Todd.

So I had two problems – Ms D had definitely found a legitimate flaw in my analysis and what do you do when the products of your analysis may be unpalatable to your employer?

Strangely they are 2 sides of the same coin: ego. I was embarrassed that Ms D had “caught me out” and I was worried that Lord Todd would be angry with me. Both of these relied on my feelings, feelings that damaged my ego.

If I was more concerned with finding out the truth rather than looking good, the fact that Ms D had “caught me out” would not be relevant and I would not be bothered. Indeed, I would be grateful that the flaw had been exposed and so could be fixed: Ms D had done me a favour!

If I was more concerned with finding out the truth rather than looking good, the fact Lord Todd might be angry with me (his decision of course) would not be relevant. It literally would not matter to me.

Ideally all analysis is ego-less, but I am human and we humans are ego-full creatures (therefore I am ego-full!). Maybe I can’t change that but I can acknowledge it and deal with it when it arises.

“That’s true,” I said. “and I will add that motive to Lord Todd’s entry. Thank-you.”

Yeah, well, acknowledging my ego and dealing with it rationally doesn’t mean I don’t feel stupid sometimes and – thinking of my next review meeting Lord Todd – scared at others.