Obviously, automatic coffee makers with hot water supply are too challenging, so here is a step-by-step guide:
1) Pull filter basket out
2) Put a new coffee filter in the basket.
3) Open coffee packet.
4) Pour coffee in basket.
5) Put filter basket back in place.
6) Rinse out near empty carafe.
7) Put carafe back.
8) Hit green/start/brew/on button.
Obviously, automatic coffee makers with hot water supply are too challenging, so here is a step-by-step guide:
1) Pull filter basket out
2) Put a new coffee filter in the basket.
3) Open coffee packet.
4) Pour coffee in basket.
5) Put filter basket back in place.
6) Rinse out near empty carafe.
7) Put carafe back.
8) Hit green/start/brew/on button.
Different types of work gatherings have different rules.
It seems like the greatest skill that many rely on to get through their careers is creative writing.
Most jobs start with a resume, in which you may have to creatively explain how your dark periods, lack of qualifications, and employment gaps don’t make you a less desirable candidate that all the people with creative resumes.
If you’re in a place which provides a peer feedback mechanism, you may need creative writing skills to critique a coworker without completely demolishing that person.
If you’re required to write your own performance appraisal, you will need to strike the balance between accuracy and best story possible. I believe this genre is called “historical fiction”.
Finally, every day you have to respond to an email from a customer or coworker who’s out-of-line, you have to respond creatively.
Forget all the business and formal writing classes. You need well-developed creative writing skills to succeed.
Insert news headline: Large bureaucratic organization covers up misdeeds of members to protect itself from admitting that there are anything but benevolent forces within the organization.
Churches, non-profits, government organizations, and large corporations all suffer from this disease that bureaucracy brings. Â On a few occasions, the ultimate consumption of the disease is some major cover-up of criminal activity of some sort.
The sensational headlines distract from the underlying problem, by making people declare that the purpose of the organization: religious, governmental, business, etc… is inherently evil. Unfortunately, the evil is one that increasingly applies to all organizations as they get larger: The bureaucracy is a self-feeding organism.
Bureaucracies often create problems for which they cannot produce solutions. If the best solution involves tearing down parts of the bureaucracy, then the bureaucracy will do its best to defeat that solution. Consequently, the only problem that survives is a poor bandage solution that, ironically, creates more bureaucracy.
THE BEATINGS MEETINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVES
Milton Waddams in Office Space:
Nina: Now Milton, don’t be greedy, let’s pass it along and make sure everyone gets a piece.
Milton Waddams: Yeah, but last time I didn’t receive a piece. And I was told…
Nina: Just pass.
[while the cake passes Milton mutters – eventually everybody but Milton gets a piece]
Milton Waddams: [muttering] I could set the building on fire.
When you start getting your meetings bumped, your invitations dumped, and not receiving cake–is there any other conclusion than Milton’s underlying suspicion that he’s intentionally being choked off?
I understand that the time of one person at a higher level is more valuable, but one wasted hour of a higher level employee can erode hours worth of productivity. Bump people sparingly. Respect their time.
Providing feedback that praises, and then offers suggestions for improvement.
I’ve always wondered why such a method left a bad taste in my mouth, but I came across one possible explanation in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
…we judge our past experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak (pleasant or unpleasant) and how they ended. Other information is not lost, but it is not used. This includes net pleasantness or unpleasantness and how long the experience lasted.
A description of one experiment demonstrating this rule is contained in Determinants of the Remembered Utility of Aversive Sounds (Schreiber/Kahneman)
…participants had two experiences of immersing one hand in painfully cold water.
The short trial lasted 60 s, with water temperature at 14 °C.
The long trial lasted 90 s; the temperature was 14 °C for
the first 60 s, then rose gradually to 15 °C over the next
30 s–still unpleasant, but a distinct improvement for most
participants.When they were later given a choice of which
trial to repeat, a significant majority of participants chose to
repeat the long trial. This preference violates logic, because
adding pain to an aversive episode cannot make it better
Toastmasters uses a sandwich technique [good-bad-good], but the challenge is that the Serial position effect might cause the criticism necessary for improvement to be lost. However, this modified sandwich technique might provide the benefits of offering constructive criticism while still producing a more positive result at the end:
- Sandwich Layer: Bread
Evaluation Element: Praise – strengths exhibited by the speaker- Sandwich Layer: Condiments
Evaluation Element: Areas for improvement – where can the speaker improve- Sandwich Layer: Meat, cheese, vegetables
Evaluation Element: Specific suggestions – how can the speaker improve
In many ways, good parents, good teaching, and good management have similar traits. There has to be respect to have control. Respect is not about being liked; respect is about being trusted to make good on whatever promise or threat is given. Maybe that oversimplifying, but take away that aforementioned trust and see what happens to the respect. Moreover, respect doesn’t just involve the person who is the recipient of the promise or threat; respect involves all observers.
Sending out materials labeled “pre-” indicates that you are making a request. Not expecting that request to be fulfilled diminishes our respect for you.
The meeting pre-read: Pre-reads which are read in their entirety in a meeting. This is such an established pattern that many people don’t even bother to open the document prior to the meeting.
Why bother? We’re going to read word-for-word in the meeting anyway, and spent 90% of our time rereading a handful of sentences.
Some of the problems with the pre-read are a consequence of no one wanting to read a 80-100 page document for the first time during a meeting. Keep the pre-reads reasonable if you want any hope of them being read beforehand.
Canceling the meeting for lack of pre-read participation would be a nice luxury, but that would be more likely to encourage people to not do the pre-reads.
Pre-work for classes: Having pre-work for classes and not expecting it to be done diminishes your students’ respect for you.
Working through the pre-work as the body of the class makes those of us who do the work beforehand despise you.
Either the pre-work is an “agenda” for the class and needs to be stated as such, or it needs to be given a good faith attempt by all students. If it’s an agenda for the class, I’ll probably opt for the class that considers it pre-work and save myself some time and aggravation.
Meetings, much like 1-hour credit lab courses in colleges, carry a much higher price than their appointed time indicates.
We’ve been over this before: Â A 15-minute meeting is more disruptive than a 3 hour one elaborated on the 15-minute meeting agenda:
The 15-Minute Meeting Agenda
There’s more to it than that this. Â There is also collateral damage. Â Everyone assumes that calendar openings = free time, so you often end up with every hour filled with at least a half hour meeting.
Appointment Backlog
Half-hour meetings rarely run under on time. Â In fact, the greeting, handshaking, and orientation portion of the meeting may take 10 to 15 minutes, unless you have an incredible facilitator for the meeting. Â Therefore, if the subject matter was worth 30 minutes, the meeting will be closer to 45 minutes in length. Â This expansion of appointment time is similar to the reason why your doctor’s appointment runs an hour behind.
Anticipation Frustration
With good fortune, your hourly half-hour meetings will only take 40-45 minutes, leaving you with free time in between. Â In this space of time you will worry about being prepared for the next meeting, take care of things (like eating) that you’ve not been giving other time for, and sit in the frustration of not being able to start anything in the amount of time you have left.
Action Items
Effective meeting facilitation will draw out a to-do list of action items that are to be resolved outside of the scope of the meeting, often to prevent the delay in their resolution from holding up the meeting itself. In principle, these are effective tools. In practice, combined with fully booked schedules, they can be like spending 8am-5pm working on adding items to your personal to-do list–it just keeps getting bigger.
Compound Multitasking
With the backlog of to-do list items and meetings, people begin doing “other work” in their meetings. Therefore, as meetings themselves impact the productivity of other work, meetings become less productive and end up running longer to get the same amount of work done–a downward spiral of productivity destruction.
I know times are tough, and that we need to save money wherever we can.
That being said, DON’T MESS WITH THE FLOW OF COFFEE.
*ahem* Please, excuse me for yelling. The supply of coffee to your workers is as vital to the productivity of your office as the supply of gasoline is to the transportation system.
Some things not to do without careful analysis and communication to your workers:
