Tag: team work

Giving

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Why do you give?

Option number 1 is, because by giving you expect the other(s) to feel obliged to giving you back at some point. For as bad and opportunistic as this sounds, we often approach giving from this standpoint, believing our action will lead to some sort of return at a later moment in time. Working hard to get a promotion is a good and quite common example.

Option number 2 is, because by giving you expect the other(s) to feel inspired to giving back at some point. You have certainly noticed the two tiny yet important differences: first of all, inspiration is a better call to action than obligation; secondly, you remove yourself from being the recipient of the giving back. Working hard to set a high standard for others to aspire to (no matter when, where, and how they’ll get there) is a good and fairly uncommon example.

Option 1 binds others to your plans, option 2 frees them to find their own way to fulfill their act of giving. Option 1 sets you for disappointment and others for dissatisfaction, option 2 sets you for amazement and others for discovery. Option 1 understands work for a reward, option 2 is work for the sake of doing work.

Be mindful when you choose.

Early mornings

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Of the people I get to talk to, there is not one who does not praise the effectiveness of working early mornings, late afternoons, and weekends.

Clearly, there’s nothing special with early mornings, late afternoons, and weekends. A part from the fact that it’s quite. That you have no meetings, no one calling to ask for a favour, nobody stopping at your desk to tell you about their last weekend, no system updates, no colleague Skyping that customer with a faulty internet connection, no need to sync or strategize.

Somewhere along the way towards openness, transparency and flatness, we have lost track of the importance of focus. Lack of focus is one of the main reasons why employees are not productive, creative and innovative. The way the organization structures their working spaces, their calendars, their updates, and their breaks is a major driver of all this.

Commit, don’t promise

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Committing is a personal matter. It is about dedicating one’s resources to an idea, a plan, a project. It involves going through the different possibilities and scenarios, the different allocations of time, energy, money, and picking one we feel we can give ourselves to. This is also the reason why committing publicly is so important. The moment we share our commitment with others, the commitment is still our (personal), and yet our very own personality is in jeopardy until we deliver. This is a powerful force to get things done.

Promising is different. A promise is always influenced by someone else, and that is the opposite of personal. You promise to change a status of the world because others are affected (negatively or positively) by that status, and yet not necessarily there are resources invested in the moment you are promising. Promising publicly is a pleonasm, as a promise is always done to someone else. Promising is easy, and that makes it also a powerful force to not get things done.

Commitment is about understanding what’s important and devote to it.

Promise is about grasping what’s urgent and put a temporary patch to it.

What’s happening?

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You enter the last week before the delivery of an important project. Your part is mostly done, you are mainly coordinating the work of others to make sure the deadline is met. One of the colleagues involved, talking with some stakeholders from other departments, gathers some piece of feedback that makes them reconsider a sizable part of the work they are doing on the project. They discuss it with you, and you feel put off by such a thing so close to the deadline. If that wasn’t enough, another person who has leverage and influence over the project sides with the criticism, and elaborates thoughts and ideas on how to possibly fix it in the long term. The deadline looms.

What do you do?

  1. You go in the tank. You have delivered your part after all, you are marginally involved in the remaining job, and excuses can be made for the lack of it. At some point, somebody will realize that there’s a problem, and you will be able to clearly explain why that has happened, and that it is not your fault.
  2. You block everything and ask to postpone the deadline. There’s lack of agreement on how to proceed, no reason to force a solution, and it is perhaps possible to open a broader discussion. People will ask about what happened, and you’ll have an explanation.
  3. You go ahead, as it was originally planned. The delivery is more important, having something some people think could be improved is far better than having an incomplete job and having to go around to explain why. You take a note to follow up on the criticism, and see if for the future it is possible to make that part better.

This is not a test.

We all probably go through the same (or very similar) thoughts at the same time. Each one of them has good motivations backing it and some kind of personal, self-interested roots. Eventually we will choose a course of action based on feelings and attitude rather than on concrete elements and facts.

We are all human beings, and it’s important to understand what is going on within us, before attempting to make a decision. That’s what can give us edge in the long term.

Pick three people

Fabrizio1 Comment

Your work would go in a much straighter line without feedback.

You’d just have to agree with yourself, put in the effort, enjoy the ride and deliver when its due. Nobody pointing out how that was tried already and did not work, how the sentence in the second paragraph could be better phrased to reflect the company’s values, how the blue could just be a bit more blue, or how it is fundamental to also feature the last meeting minutes to makes sure everybody is on the same page.

And how would you get out of doing the same thing over and over and over again? How would you get better, be more effective, get closer to your customers, in a single word “develop”?

We certainly get too much feedback, and yet we need feedback. And sometimes, in the rush of the end of the quarter, we just cut feedback out because we don’t have time to filter it, to process it, to act on it.

Pick three people. One you respect, one that is professionally close to you and one that is where you picture yourself in five-ten years. Ideally, they should be exposed to your work, or happy to be exposed to it. As you know them, you know that when they deliver feedback they do it genuinely, honestly and with your best interest in mind. As they know you, they know what type of feedback you are seeking, what your stengths are, your ambitions, your passions, your motivators, and where you want to go (and who you want to bring along). They might grow out of their role (respect is not forever, your role might change, your plans might as well), and that is fine, because other people will enter the stage ready to take their place.

Pick three people. And listen carefully to what they have to say. Absorb and digest their feedback, see what make sense, argument your position without defensiveness, open up and take the time to cherish the learning experience. Test what they suggest, see if it works, make changes and reiterate.

Pick three people. The others will have to wait.