Technology, Projects & a Yes Man Approach - The match made in hell (A Brief Writeup)

 

In tech you will often encounter people who have hard time saying "No" to their customers & even colleagues. Because people don't want to be seen as:

- Show stopper

- Negative/pessimistic

- Work dodger (in hindi we call them "kaamchor")

- Incompetent 

- Noise maker

- Uncareful 

In which case people often end up committing to asks from others which are - unrealistic, unjustifiable, impossible, impractical & last but not the least - out of scope.

So those people often:

- Fail at delivering their promises and commitments

- Make up things

- Channel incorrect and wrong information

- Fail at meeting quality and standards 

- End up overworking and experience burnouts

- Unable to find the right balance between work and personal life/family/friends/social & society bound activities 

But how do we handle it ?

Well it boils down to the Organization leadership and hence the culture. At least in my personal experience I haven't seen many people being successful to turn around the culture in corporate from bottom up. Have You ?

On the flip side You as an individual can still get better at it and play it right beside being ethical. So spend time (which most tech folks in general don't give a damn about surprisingly):

- Set high standards for yourself (If you don't care about it, who else would?)

- Be more strategic in your approach (Hardest thing for people in general)

- Pick your battles wisely & carefully (You have limited energy & time)

- Improve your negotiation skills (People rarely think about)

- Learn the art of saying "No" politely (You can learn that)

- Pick up on "Effective Argument" skills (Don't just argue, do it the right way)

- Spend time on improving communication skills (You can do all of above and still fail if you can't communicate it properly and convincingly - It not only about what you say but also how you say it)

- Improve your vocabulary

- And yet be prepared to be criticized until you find your right spot and right place (Like I said, its a culture and leadership issue with little to no control you have)

Further Readings

-  Why Are You Always so Negative?

-  Planning fallacy

-  Cobb's Paradox

-  How Unethical Behavior Spreads

-  You Can't Incentivize Performance  

-  Negotiation Skills

-  Effective Argument Skills

-  Effective Communication Skills

-  Effective Problem Solving Skills 

-  Handling Criticism 

-  Strategic Skills 

-  Improving business writing skills 

-  RFC 1925 Rule 3 & 6

-  Being Ethical Is Long-Term Greedy

-  "Clouds, Overlays and SDN: What really matters" Ivan Pepelnjak

-  The Three Paths of Enterprise IT

-  Why Is Public Cloud Networking So Different?

HTH...

A Tech Artist 🎨

Problem Solving & How Often People Get it All Wrong - A Brief Perspective

 

People often mix:

• Problem Framing
• Problem Solving
• Communicating Solutions

Those are 3 different skills and often people look at them as a one singular thingy or use those terms interchangeably, which is of course incorrect.

You might be a good problem solver in theory but still a terrible problem framer (problem framing is least talked about topic surprisingly), flip side - You might be a good problem framer or problem solver or both and still bad at communicating your view point, analysis & recommendations.

And yet we are not talking about:

- Design thinking

- Mental Models

- Hypothesis Testing

- Data Analysis & Analytics

- Systems Thinking

- Problem Solver vs. Problem Owner Mindset

- Cognitive biases

- Thinking Fast & Slow

- Proactiveness & Simulations

- Time & Focus Mgmt.

- Chaos Theory

- Complexity Theory

- Information Theory

- Epistemology (aka the theory of knowledge)

- Judgement

- Scenario Planning

- Gemba Walk

- Dunning–Kruger effect

etc..

So what you think about yourself ? 

Are you a good problem framer, problem solver or an effective solution communicator ?

 HTH...

A Tech Artist 🎨