I once again just sent out the last message I needed to send today for work. The schedule has been pretty tight lately, mainly because of the multiple things ongoing.
When some of them demand attention at the same time, that is when overloading happens.
But I am ok perfectly. Nothing I could not handle. Have been through much tighter schedules.
While efficiency could surely be improved in some cases, I am satisfied with my performance overall.
And I feel I have regained some of my confidence. Now is the time to guard against arrogance!
To have more dimensions, we need to both go up and go down.
Going up to discover and incorporate more dimensions, such as going from 2-D to 3-D.
Drawing up the whole picture, such as the value chain, helps.
When we select suppliers, we do not only look at the prices, but also the quality, maintenance frequency and costs, consumable cost, lead time and even payment terms.
When we deal with packaging, we do not only look at how visually appealing to customers, but also the branding image it reflects, the cost, the transportation requirements and even the environmental friendliness.
Going down to break down something into pieces, such as breaking down working hours into number of FTEs and working hours per FTE or breaking down revenue into price and sales volume.
This is critical to isolate root causes and engineer targeted fixes.
Going up to incorporate too many dimensions or going down to break down into too detailed levels is not necessary, wastes resources and often decreases the efficiency in solving the problem.
We do not need 5-D to describe the position of the spider in the room.
We do not need to know the behavior of any specific customer as long as the segment he/she belongs to is adequately represented in the analysis.
All the while, I have had no problem delivering work, but I have been really bad in caring about how people think about me.
I think that is the reason why I get frustrated and repel away the promotions that seems so rightfully mine.
However, recently I got feedback that I was too nice to push through certain things.
Though it came as somewhat a surprise, the feedback made total sense.
I have been too passive in certain meetings just to avoid conflict. The potential cost is slow progress.
I say “potential” because I really cannot be sure about the outcome if I have pushed aggressively.
Possibly, things get done.
Also possibly, I encounter greater push back and the relationship gets affected, which results in even slower progress, or worse, things going in opposite direction.
From my assessment, the probability for the latter to happen is bigger.
However, it does send the message that I am not actively pushing. And being passive is definitely not the way to get promoted.
There must be a way to achieve all of below:
I push actively
Progress is improved or not negatively affected at least
Working relationship is not affected
I know people who have done it.
I do not believe I am less qualified than them.
But I was not even trying.
And that could be the difference between people who get promoted and people who do not.
There is a reason behind everything after all. And the reason might be more justified than we think.
I was once involved in a discussion on why people read novel. The point that stayed with me was to observe other people’s life and learn to deal with those situations including what to do and what to say and how others would feel in those situations.
In this sense, novel could be closer to real world than biography. Novel will always come from real life while biography tend to exaggerate the good aspects and hide or rephrase the other aspects.
In this sense, I have read too little novel and need to catch up.
I recently joined a project team as an expert to support remotely. Everything related to work is communicated within the work chat group and people are expected to be responsible due to the tight timeline.
Last Wednesday, the project manager had to take half day off for a presentation to another client.
So throughout the day, the other team members covered as much as possible for the project manager and she replied messages whenever she could.
Everything was going well.
Until the Partner asked the project manager to prepare a speech outline for the client CEO in the chat group.
This was a task not easily covered by other members of the team, as the outline required full understanding of project status, stakeholder relations, client management intentions etc etc.
And everyone had enough on their hands anyway.
So no one replied on behalf of the project manager and the project manager only replied in the late afternoon with a clarification question.
Till now, everything seemed normal.
What caused some doubts was that the partner never replied, even though the reply @ the partner.
The speed outline was clearly important. But why would the partner not reply?
There was some guessing whether the partner was not happy with the project manager or maybe the partner did not have the answer for the question either which could indicate unclear directions for the project going forward.
The doubts was only cleared when the partner finally replied the message in the chat group, explaining that she missed the message. And the answer to the question was clear and in line with team’s expectation.
All those guesses and worries proved to be a waste of time and only added a bit more stress to the already stressful team.
This is a minor incident and I might have over-interpreted it. However, it did make me think that:
Try to interpret with “Silliness” as much as possible, instead of “Evil Intentions”.
“Silliness” here includes all kinds of unintentional behaviors, e.g. ignorance and negligence.
This is not self-comforting. This is a statistical reality.
Just think about it.
What are the chances that your manager who usually responds very promptly suddenly gives no reply to your important email because he no longer trusts you? Most probably, for whatever reason, he has not seem your email yet.
What are the chances that your colleague does not invite you to his/her birthday lunch because he/she does not like you any more? Most probably, he/she did not plan it and just went with whoever he/she could gather.
What are the chances that your three-year old son insists on playing with you while you have to rush for deadline with the intention to cause you work problems? He just wants to play with you because he likes you. This is the best “Good Intention” one can get.
The real actions of “Evil Intention” are not so common, while interpreting so by mistake is much too common.
Therefore, try to interpret with “Silliness” as much as possible, instead of “Evil Intentions”.
This might be closer to reality and is a better way to interact with the world.
