Tag: team work

Responsibility avoidance

FabrizioLeave a comment

Companies have plenty of sacks of responsibility avoidance. They exist and grow in the space between two poorly designed processes, or between well designed processes that are way past their best before date.

In a way, it’s impossible to avoid. Companies will get to a point where, to a given issue, different people will answer systematically with: it’s not my responsibility.

But if you don’t leave enough space for those who care enough to actually do something about the issue, that’s where the real failure is.

The edge

FabrizioLeave a comment

A 3-step way to establish a new, healthy professional relationship.

Start with “here’s what we are dealing with”. Be thorough and fully honest. Unearth everything and establish authority by showing that you are not afraid to face facts.

Continue with “here’s what we are going to do about it”. Think in incremental steps rather than big reveals. Be detailed, put everything on a calendar, and use some system to assign responsibility.

Finish with “here’s what can go wrong”. No idea, plan, or project is flawless. And you know that many things can and will go wrong. Just put them out there, be on top of it.

Good time for a break

FabrizioLeave a comment

July is a fantastic time to take a break, right after the first half is done.

And to be honest, it’s always a fantastic time to take a break. When you have done good work, when you have done a lot of work, when you are about to start working on something new.

This is still good advice to follow, right before the break.

Overcompensating

FabrizioLeave a comment

It’s tempting to set up a general rule to avoid a nuisance that is due to a few negative experiences. The problem is that the rule does not consider the vast majority of experiences that are positive, and therefore it ends up fixing an issue that, in most cases, is not an issue.

That’s the case of the employer setting up very rigid working hours because two people (out of tens or hundreds of employees) usually start working after lunch. What happens the next an employee is 10 minutes late? What if it’s their first time?

Overcompensating is rarely a good idea.

Audit and reset

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you start something new, it is difficult to anticipate where that will be going.

Perhaps you buy a tool, you set up a process, you hire a few people, you add a contacts field in your CRM, and then after one or two years you find yourself in a completely different situation, and the thing that used to work (kind of) now clearly does not work anymore.

The problem though starts when you avoid auditing and resetting, and instead add more on top of what is not working. Another version of the tool, more people, a new step in the process, one more contacts field in the CRM.

Before you start adding, be sure to audit and reset.

It takes time, it might feel like a failure, and it’s not always pleasant. But that’s how you make the most out of what you will decide to bring in next.