Grumpy Coworker

  • You Do This Well, But You Could Improve That…

    The Problem

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    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.  The peak-end rule proposes that:

    …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

    A Possible Improvement on the Constructive Feedback Technique

    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:

    1. Sandwich Layer: Bread
      Evaluation Element: Praise – strengths exhibited by the speaker
    2. Sandwich Layer: Condiments
      Evaluation Element: Areas for improvement – where can the speaker improve
    3. Sandwich Layer: Meat, cheese, vegetables
      Evaluation Element: Specific suggestions – how can the speaker improve
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  • Respect and The Prefix “Pre-“

    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.

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  • The Collateral Damage of a Meeting

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    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:  A 15-minute meeting is more disruptive than a 3 hour one elaborated on the 15-minute meeting agenda:

    The 15-Minute Meeting Agenda

    • 5 minutes travel time/dial-in time/waiting for people to realize their clock is out-of-sync
    • 5 minutes of greetings
    • 2 minutes of status
    • 3 minutes of disconnect beeps or leaving early for a restroom break

    Collateral Damage

    There’s more to it than that this.  There is also collateral damage.  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.  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.  Therefore, if the subject matter was worth 30 minutes, the meeting will be closer to 45 minutes in length.  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.  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.

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  • Do Not Mess with the Flow of Coffee

    New coffee maker
    Image by scriptingnews via Flickr

    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:

    • Requiring workers to pay for the office coffee.
    • Changing the supplier of the coffee to your break room.
    • Changing the model of coffee maker to a cheaper one.  (You had better make sure it can actually handle the load that your office staff will put on it.)
    • “Going green” by no longer supplying cups. It’s best to get acknowledgment in writing from every one of your employees, lest a revolt break out due to the inability of people to actually get coffee, or worse, people taking the carafes as coffee mugs.

     

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  • Friday Diversion: Sunrise through the clouds

    Sunrise through the clouds
    Sunrise through the clouds by Betchaboy, on Flickr

  • Crash the Project Plan

    Crash Closed
    Image by Fabio.com.ar via Flickr

    Why in the world would you want to “crash” a project plan? The very use of the word “crash” seems to purvey a sense of doom.

    If you’re not familiar with the “crashing” process, it involves taking a current project plan’s Gantt chart and looking for opportunities to make the chart predict an earlier completion date.

    In some cases, this is a completely legitimate practice.  If you have tasks that can be done at the same time by two different people or tasks that are erroneously dependent upon each other, you can possibly shorten the timeline by crashing.

    However, I’ve also observed the practice of having an already promised date set for a project, and then having your project managers actually figure out how long it will actually take. When realistic expectations are inevitably longer than promised, the discrepancy will either be:

    1. Allowed to slip for the time being if comfortably close to the original promised date.
    2. Immediately scrutinized for tasks that take “too long”.  (Build a highway: 1 year…  Change that to 2 days.)

    Ultimately, there will be a process of crashing either at the start of the project or in the middle of the project. Unfortunately, response to reality taking longer than promised is often to redefine what reality should be instead of actually trying to accept reality.

    The end result becomes a crashing of the project instead of the project plan.

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  • Offensive Email

    No, not offensive email that will get you in trouble with HR, just with the recipients of your emails who already have enough bloat in their inboxes.

    This email is all wrong. Don't send it.

    What’s the problem?

    1. I think we covered the part about motivational sayings in email signatures previously…
    2. The information block in your email signature is excessive. Internally, we know what company you work for. Externally, the title/department information probably won’t mean much.
    3. You’re sending an email for a one word reply. I know acknowledgment is necessary, but coupled with everything else, it’s excessive.
    4. Your one word reply is the same as your valediction or complimentary close:  “Thanks. Thanks,” sounds like “Pizza! Pizza!“
    5. You have an image that’s larger than the rest of your excessive signature block and message body combined–and it’s taking up way more space in email [if you’re using Outlook] than it did on the computer you copied it from.

  • Read Receipts in Outlook

    Read receipts can be obnoxious. Outlook’s handling of them can be equally obnoxious.

    I curiously received a read receipt in Outlook when I scheduled a meeting, that meeting was forwarded by a invitee of the meeting, and the recipient of the forward accepted.

    Why, Outlook? Why? I don’t want read receipts. I don’t want a read receipt for every recipient of the 100 emails I sent last week. I have enough time balancing between my inbox quota and keeping the necessary emails on the server so that I can access them remotely.

    Of course, after seeing the read receipt, I was curious how many people I’m sending read receipts to and not knowing it–so I turned on the option to “Ask me before sending a response” to read receipt requests:

    • In Outlook 2007, select the Tools menu.
    • Click on “Options…”
    • In the “Preferences” tab [the default tab], click the “E-mail Options” button.
    • In the “E-mail Options” window, click the “Tracking Options” button.
    • You have three options for setting the response.
      • Always send a response
      • Never send a response
      • Ask me before sending a response

    Apparently, “read receipts” also mean “send a message if recipient deletes the message without reading it.” That concept is creepy enough, but apparently, even the messages that are just notifications that a recipient has accepted a meeting invite send receipts back if the recipient of the acceptance notification deletes the email.

    I wonder if it sends a read receipt when I’ve read someone’s “Out of Office” message. I wouldn’t be surprised.

  • Be Open to Change!

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    “The only constant is change.”

    “Be open to change.”

    “Embrace change.”

    For those who work in small businesses or startups, these mantras probably aren’t necessary. When you’re breathing constant change, you don’t have to be reminded that it exists.

    No, the only people that have to be reminded that “change happens” are those who work for large, slow moving organizations, such as large corporations and government agencies. Many of us have actually stuck with these organizations, despite all the bureaucracy, specifically because change is such a rarity.

    Stop telling us safety seeking employees about this whole change thing. Stop giving us copies of Who Moved My Cheese? If we truly embraced change, we probably wouldn’t suffer the high degree of bureaucracy in favor of the safety of the large organization.

  • Review: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team has information that seems like it should be common sense to everyone. Absence of trust, fear of conflict, etc… all of these are negative habits and emotions that erode the ability for a team to actually be effective.

    One result is meetings becoming non-productive time-killers in which eliciting even the most innocuous discussion is met with fierce resistance.

    I see the principles in this book functioning the best in healthy corporate cultures and passionate non-profits. Where I don’t see these concepts functioning well are in caustic cultures and in disruptive periods in a company’s existence.

    While it’s true that every one of these dysfunctions can be triggered internally, possibly exacerbated by a poor leader of the team, the root of these problems can often be traced to the culture of the company or immediate department in which the team functions.

    In lean times, when there is a Survivor culture, detection and exposing of someone else’s weakness is the simplest way to survive another week. It’s hard to not be a dysfunctional team when you’re basically a pack of starving feral dogs.

    In some environments, dissent can often mark people who even turn out to be right. (Why didn’t you successfully argue your case? It’s your fault we didn’t go with your opinion.)

    I guess all management books operate on the principle that you have a basically good environment and good people, and this book is no exception. If you have worthwhile people for the most part, I can see where this book may be helpful, but then again, you probably have functional team–right?