Grumpy Coworker

  • If it’s “not your department”, be prepared to be left out of the loop.

    If your pattern of behavior is to push the load to another team consistently when there is a problem with a specific area, then we will have to start assuming that you either have no ability to deal with the problem, no knowledge of the area with a problem, or both.  This forces the rest of us to conclude that we are wasting everyone’s time including you on the problem-solving meetings and emails.

    Once this is the case, you will be left out of the loop. Once this happens, why do you start complaining about not being included on our discussions?

  • Exclamation points necessary!!

    Once upon a time, in what people used to call “grammar school”, the exclamation point was a thing of mystery. It was generally something that seemed to never have a use in writing, with the exception of after an interjection or a strongly emphasized command.

    The Wikipedia article on the exclamation mark quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald:

    Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes.

    So, when did exclamation points go from “to be used as sparingly as capsaicin extract in chili” to “like salt on french fries?” It seems as though any reply of gratitude via email, text, or instant message requires at least one exclamation point if you’re grateful, and two if it was a big help. Don’t underemphasize your gratitude with a period. It may come out as a forced “thank you”, similar to the way your parents made you thank an aunt for an ugly sweater.

    Some people even extend this required emphasis by put things in ALL CAPS.

    Maybe we should suspend coffee service to the office for a while.

    THANKS FOR READING!!

  • Risk Taking and Startup Mentality in a Large Organization

    Can a large organization really encourage the risk taking and game changing thinking that a small business or startup does?

    What if large team performance is very much like a well-diversified portfolio, but in the sense that the high performing ideas get offset by the stable performing ideas and horribly performing ideas.  The consensus ideas tend toward the mean of the group.  The larger the organization, the closer the sample is to the general population, and the more likely that the results will tend toward the mean, i.e., mediocrity.

    By contrast, a small business or team is going to be a less diversified sample of the population.  With less diversification of ideas, performance becomes concentrated.  This increases the possibilities of a spectacular failure as well as of a spectacular success.

    The advantage of this quick success or death is that failure becomes obvious.  In a large organization, the slow death may be enough for the organization to continue on its path for decades, until their business is completely gone.

    Think of this as the difference between investing your 401(k) in CDs, bond index funds, or maybe even index funds [large organization] vs. picking a single company to throw money into each year [small team/business].  In the former choices, you will get higher performance only by sheer volume, and yet, even the CDs seem like they’re gaining in value all the time.  30 years later, you will have anywhere from the low end of mediocre performance to the high end.

    In investing in a single company each year, you may end up with a boom or bust scenario, but you’ll have opened up the possibility of performance outside of the “mediocre” or “average” range.

    The bottom line is, the smaller the sample size, the larger the performance swings can be.  Would a large team really even want those performance swings if they were possible?

  • Geography is Clearly Not Your Cup of Tea, Ergo, Your Opinions on Those Countries Aren’t

    If you go to the tourist traps of Austria, they sell bumper stickers that depict kangaroos with a line crossed through them. If you really think about this, this is clearly geared toward the ignorance of English speakers… after all, Austria in German is Österreich, whereas Australia in German is Australien.

    Would I be wrong in declaring your opinion on the people of both “Australia” and “Austria” invalid if you can’t keep the two countries straight in your head?

    Furthermore, though there’s never really an appropriate time or place to express your ignorant opinions of other cultures, doing so after demonstrating that you can’t even place the country you’re speaking of in the proper hemisphere is a special kind of fail.

    What would make a fail like this even more special would be expressing such opinions near coworkers from similar cultures.  Luckily, those coworkers don’t seem to fit with the stereotypes that you express.

  • Length of Interruption is not Proportional to Amount of Disruption

    This topic has been covered here before: Just because something requires very little time on its own does not mean it disrupts less. Any activity that takes “only a small amount of time” is likely to be accompanied by many other ones that carry the same justification for their existence.

    Justifying that something should be done because it takes an insignificant amount of time is the same as saying that a 0.02% increase in your property tax should not concern you. The individual amount may be insignificant, but after years of property tax increases, you may end up with 1 or 2% extra in taxes.  More importantly, every additional request will carry the extra guilt trip of having accepted increases before and may embolden further, possibly larger requests.

    Cognitive disruption

    Deep thought tasks require deep concentration–see Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.  You can’t do deep analysis or intense tasks if you have 30 minutes between meetings.

    Meetings are only one such offender.  Logging your time by work code and customer, and filling out three pages of forms upon beginning or ending a task are other such offenders.  Let’s say that you were reading an unabridged copy (1488 pages) of Les Misérables (Signet Classics), and every 10th page, read a page of A Tale of Two Cities (free Kindle Edition). You’re going to get the details of the characters confused because the settings are so similar.

    This example may seem extreme, but in reality, is this not what all of this extra tasks are doing? You record time about a project. You send an email about a project. You open some form and fill out information about the project. At some point you may actually do work on the project. At this point, you’re going to have to start a spreadsheet to keep track of your tasks and what necessary steps you’ve done as part of completing a task. Fortunately, you can at least create some sort of calculated field to turn the task green, yellow, or red, based on whether the task is complete, partially complete, or not started. That should save you the mental energy of determining whether a task is actually complete–so at least you have that going for you.

  • Be Sure That Customer Service Doesn’t Cause the Process to Suffer

    Look, I know you want to be helpful and productive.  It’s just that we have a process here.

    We can’t have you helping customers out if it comes at the expense of the “5-step process to Serve the Customer Better.”

    The customer can wait.

    Also, make sure to ask the customer who to bill your time to so that we can make sure that you get paid.

    Be sure to get the proper accounting id and record your billing as the proper work type code number.

    Thanks.

  • Not everyone speaks English as their first language.

    Welcome to the world.

    It’s a diverse place out here.

    You will probably have to speak to someone eventually that doesn’t speak perfect {name your country as an adjective here} English.

    You may have to listen closely.  You may have to ask politely for that person to repeat themselves.

    This is all understandable.

    However, it is unacceptable to angrily raise your voice in frustration because the other person doesn’t speak the same brand of English you do.

    Of course, maybe you’re not raising your voice in frustration.  Maybe you’re just raising your voice to be understood better.  Let me point two things out:  First, the other person doesn’t have a hearing issue.  Second, you’re the one having difficulty understanding.

    Thanks.

  • Keep your motivational sayings to yourself and not in my email.

    I appreciate that you love your job, or that you at least have a daily affirmation that you repeat to tell yourself that you do.

    Do you know who reads your motivational saying when you use it in your signature line?  Hint:  It’s not you.

    Yes, that’s right.  Everyone else reads your motivational saying.  It gets attached to every request for help.  It gets attached to every reminder to fill out my bureaucratic paperwork.  It gets attached to every admonition that you send out.

    Now I know why you enjoy your job.  You’re making us miserable with being a bureaucratic task master.

    Think about the perception of that email signature.

  • Hand Sanitizer Does Not Take the Place of Soap and Water

    I’m really starting to dread the day the hand sanitizer dispensers went in.

    Somehow, many people are under the impression that the hand sanitizer *cleans* your hands.

    If you’ve been baking brownies, you can’t clean any batter off with hand sanitizer.  You’ll just end up with brownies that have been disinfected on the surface.

    If you don’t believe me, ask an academic:  “Hand sanitizers no substitute for soap and water.”

  • Some really good insight into why we all hate powerpoint…

    Renegade HR:  The Folly of Powerpoint

    I truly think that bad and misused PowerPoint is a symptom of a bigger problem:  either lack of intrinsic understanding of what you’re talking about or lack of writing skills.  Maybe you even have both problems.

    The same goes for long-winded white papers.  At least in the case of the white paper, the individual circumstances of your audience are an unknown, so the lack of understanding on at least one side is understandable.  Ultimately, however, if you are defining what the problem is and how to solve it, you should have the depth of understanding to break down your message into very simple terms.

    Which brings me back to PowerPoint:  If you are presenting on a topic in which you don’t have a strong enough understanding of the topic to put less than 100 words [YIKES!] on each slide, you probably shouldn’t be presenting on the topic.

    Every one of the four tips mentioned in the post (tell stories, stop using bullets, stop using words, go naked) only works if you have enough understanding of your topic to let go of your slide show.

    Otherwise, you’re just reading aloud the big print version of a research paper.