Humor: The Commute

It’s that time of year when schools let out for the summer.  It’s no doubt a challenging transition for parents to keep the kiddos busy until the school year starts up again.  But there’s one very good thing about summer recess… the work commute gets better!  No more traffic jams in front of the multiple schools you pass by on the way to work.  No more stay at home parents on the roads taking kids to school during the commute time.  No more school buses stopping every other block.  Depending on your route, this could shave a ton of time off your summer commute.  Enjoy it for a couple months! 

While the school-related delays are annoying, there’s an endless list of other frustrating factors to our daily commutes.  Like most people, some tick me off more than others.  But as I’ve gotten older (or as I call it, more mature and wise), I’ve gotten less ‘road-rage-ish’ and more ‘it is what it is-ish.’  Although many of these are general driving annoyances, they become amplified during the morning and evening commutes.  Here’s some of the most annoying pet peeves of the daily commute:       

Seniority Priority

Seniority priority.  It’s a part of corporate America that doesn’t get a lot of pub, but is at the heart of most everything we do.  Senior level execs say ‘Jump!’ and all colleagues quickly ask ‘How high?’  Unless you want to commit career suicide, requests from senior level execs naturally take priority.  This concept can be extended throughout all levels of the organization.  Basically, the higher the person is on the org chart above you, the higher the priority you will place on the request.  

Humor: Funny How the Story Changes

Remember the experiment where a person whispers a short story to the person next to her and each person does the same until the story has traveled around a roomful of people?  By the time the story gets around the room, the story has been completely changed from its original version.

We see this ALL the time in Corporate America.  Instead of a roomful of people, the story moves up the chain of command.  As the story moves up the food chain, so does the team’s perceived capabilities.  Overpromising or overreaching is commonplace, which can lead to horrific senior-level decision making.  Here’s a humorous take on how the story may change at different levels of the chain of command when a simple question is asked about a potential project.  Enjoy.

You Might Be A Micromanager If…

Are you a micromanager?  How do you know for sure?  Most micromanagers aren’t self-aware enough to know.  If you’re curious whether or not you may be a micromanager, here’s a handy top 10 list.  If you are guilty of multiple items on this list, you are likely a micromanager (and for the sake of your employees please work on addressing this behavior!).   

You might be a micromanager if…

Go Put Out That Fire Now! A Lesson in Providing Direction

Have you ever had a manager or colleague ask you to take care of a problem, only to give you virtually no background or guidance?  And when you ask more than one question, you’re told you’ll need to figure it out yourself.  The good old delegate and dash.  Talk about being set up to fail.  But now it’s your problem because you are not a mind reader.  Plus, now you are forced to prioritize the urgent over the important (my experience is most fires turn out to be relatively unimportant).  Good luck with that.

Since we are always having to put out fires at work, I’ll use the fire analogy to help managers understand the difficult position they put staff members in when they do this.

Done or Done Right

What’s better, done or done right?  Completion or progress?  Timeliness or accuracy?  Ready, fire, aim or ready, aim, fire?  Quantity or quality? 

We’ve heard the saying ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.’  Fair point.  If you only accept perfection, you may never reach the finish line.  That's a problem.  However, we’ve also heard ‘Do it once and do it right.’  If you have to re-do something multiple times because it wasn’t completed correctly the first time, that’s a problem too.  So if both approaches are right, you can see how trying to achieve the appropriate balance may be a significant source of stress and frustration for workers everywhere.

I Have Nothing to Do

Years ago I had a person work for me who had a very high opinion of himself.  In his mind, he was a superstar.  He walked on water, did no wrong, and everything he touched turned to gold.  Ever worked with one of these people?  While he did produce decent work, there was a bit of a discrepancy between his perception and everyone else's reality.  In my opinion, one reason for this gap was his inability to take initiative or be a self-starter.  At one point during a lull in our workload, he even asked me for something to work on because as he said ‘he had nothing to do.’  While I appreciated the apparent desire to take on new tasks, I was a bit disappointed this person really couldn’t find a single thing to do on his own.