“Split the pole.” Sounds straightforward, right? Like you just take something, divide it neatly down the middle, and bam, two perfect halves. Easy peasy.
But let me tell ya, in my experience, especially in any kind of workplace, whenever someone important stands up and proudly announces, “We’re gonna split the pole!” – that’s usually my cue to brace for impact. It’s never, and I mean never, as clean or simple as it sounds. It’s more like trying to split a week-old, over-microwaved bagel with a plastic knife. You just end up with a mangled mess and a lot of frustration.
So, why do I get all worked up over such a simple-sounding idea?
Well, this goes back to a job I had a good few years ago. We were a decent team, you know? Small, but we worked well together, actually got things done, and didn’t hate each other by Friday afternoon. Pretty good setup. Then, a new wave of management swept in, fresh off some seminar, waving around a shiny new playbook of buzzwords. And guess what their favorite play was? Yep. “To drive synergy and optimize output, we must split the pole!”
And the “pole” they were so eager to split? Us. The team. They took our little group, about eight of us who knew how each other ticked, and decided to carve us into two “leaner, meaner” teams of four. The grand plan was that one mini-team would handle Feature X, and the other mini-team would tackle Feature Y. On paper, maybe it looked like a stroke of genius to someone in a PowerPoint presentation. Pure genius!
But the project we were working on? It was this tangled beast, everything connected to everything else. You couldn’t just draw a line down the middle. What actually happened was… well, chaos is a polite word. Suddenly, instead of quick chats and easy collaboration, we had these two tiny, isolated camps. If Team A needed something from Team B’s “half of the pole,” it became this whole formal song and dance. Emails, meetings about emails, clarifications… it was exhausting. Stuff started getting missed. Deadlines became suggestions. And the finger-pointing, oh boy. “That’s not our side of the pole that’s creaking, it’s definitely their faulty half!”
I remember this one guy, Mark. We used to grab coffee and just hash out problems, super productive. After the “split,” he was on the other “team.” Suddenly, talking to Mark about a work thing felt like I was trying to conduct international diplomacy. The whole vibe just soured. It wasn’t about the project anymore; it was about protecting your tiny bit of turf. People who used to be work buddies started acting like rivals. All because some suit wanted to sound decisive by “splitting the pole.”
Predictably, the whole project went sideways. It ended up being late, way over budget, and the final thing was a clunky mess that nobody was proud of. A lot of good folks bailed, myself included. I just couldn’t deal with the atmosphere. They’d taken something that worked and, in the name of some snappy slogan, broken it into pieces that didn’t fit anymore.
So now, whenever I hear that phrase, “split the pole,” I don’t picture efficiency. I picture that office, that project, and Mark looking stressed out. I just think, some things are whole for a reason. And trying to chop them up with a catchy phrase usually means you’re just gonna make a bigger mess for everyone. Funnily enough, a while after I left, I saw they were hiring for a “Project Coordinator to enhance inter-team communication” for that same department. Made me laugh. Some splits, you just can’t glue back together easily.
