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.

Results or Facetime?

It’s that time of year again when it’s usually cold in the morning and comfortable in the afternoon.  Walking the few blocks into work from the parking garage on these very chilly mornings, I’ve noticed many people not wearing a coat.  Conversely, during the winter months, on mornings with the same temperatures, there will not be a single person without a coat.  Why is this?  Simple.  Many people use the warped logic of looking at the calendar to determine what to wear instead of dressing appropriately based on the current temperature.  Makes no sense.

Do More with Less

Can we have a pizza party for the team?  No.  Can we sign up for that training session?  No.  Can we do that teambuilding event?  No.  Can we update our software?  No.  Can we have a holiday party?  No.  Can we get a raise?  Heck no.  Instead, we're going to cut the expense budget by 5%.

 

And oh by the way, we’re not backfilling any of those positions where half the department left the company.  We’ll just need to figure out a way to absorb those responsibilities into our workload.  Plus, we’ll need to take on that new project.

Change for the Sake of Change

The three certainties in life are death, taxes, and change.  Change in the workplace is virtually a daily occurrence.  Why so much change?  Are we that bad now?  Could we be that much better?  We’ll never know unless we change!  But which ones are the needed and good changes and which ones are the changes for the sake of change?  Ideally, every decision maker should use an impartial set of criteria to perform a cost/benefit analysis and come to a rational decision.  But we all know that ’rational’ and ‘impartial’ doesn’t always happen. 

Office Politics: A Couple Do's and Don'ts

Everyone’s got an opinion on office politics.  Heck, there's even a website dedicated to Office Politics!  Some decent reads that get more into this topic include Office Politics Handbook, Dealing With Office Politics, Stop Avoiding Office Politics, How Office Politics Work, and How to Handle Office Politics. 

Here's a couple of my simple tips to keep in mind when navigating the office politics maze.