Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 19, Issue 31;   July 31, 2019: More Things I've Learned Along the Way: IV

More Things I've Learned Along the Way: IV

by

When I gain an important insight, or when I learn a lesson, I write it down. Here's Part IV from my personal collection. Example: When it comes to disputes and confusion, one person is enough.

When I learn something, or when I witness someone else learning something, I sometimes wish I had learned it long ago. If it could have saved me trouble, or led me somewhere I find appealing, I write it down. Here's another installment from my growing collection.

  • Professional relationships are like bank savings accounts. You can't make withdrawals until you've made enough deposits.
  • We are all imperfect. All of us. Even the people we admire and respect most. And that imperfection makes them no less worthy of admiration or respect.
  • Give slackers the room they need to fail. Helping them out of a jam just ensures that they'll be around long enough to depend on you to help them out of their next jam.
  • Not everyone who breaks the rules is evil or dangerous. But steer clear of people who break the rules solely for personal gain.
  • When it comes to disputes and confusion, one person is enough.
  • Using past achievements as a predictor of future performance is a great way to build a team of has-beens.
  • A happy dog The birds at the bird feeder take turns, but the bigger birds get more turns than the smaller birds do. Seemed a little unfair, until I realized that bigger birds need more food.
  • Some birds are just too big for some bird feeders. What seems like an advantage in some ways can come at a very high price.
  • Even if you don't plan for Reality, Reality will happen anyway.
  • I like podcasts, but they're pretty much the slowest way to learn anything.
  • Withholding bad news leaves space for people to make up what they don't know much about. What they make up is often worse than any bad news you can withhold.
  • Clutter isn't a reflection of the state of a person's mind. Some very confused people have really neat offices.
  • The quality of decisions that affect lots of people is correlated with the regard the decision makers have for those same people.
  • You You can't get a bully to stop
    bullying by explaining
    why bullying is bad
    can't get a bully to stop bullying by explaining why bullying is bad.
  • When bullies understand that disciplinary action will result if they continue to bully others, they don't stop bullying. They just get cleverer about it.
  • Loss may be painful, but sometimes it makes space in life for something new and wonderful.
  • When someone you know is in the grip of an addictive substance, beware. You might not be able to determine who's speaking — the person or the substance.
  • The worst thing about procrastination isn't that you eventually have to tackle whatever you deferred. It's that you lose the freedom to choose a good time to tackle it.
  • Getting too much email can create an overpowering urge to unsubscribe from good stuff just because it takes too long to read. Resist that urge. Instead, use email filtering more effectively, or unsubscribe from the chaff.
  • When I find myself doing something on a computer repeatedly, and very inconveniently, chances are good that I'm doing something either unnecessary or dumb. If it is necessary, and it's not dumb, there's almost surely a better way.
  • Sometimes a difficult problem has a very elegant solution. When that happens, what made solving the problem difficult wasn't the problem — it was my biases, prejudices, fears, or blindness to assumptions I was making.
  • Naming something is a long way from mastering it. But mastering something does require naming it. (See "The Nominal Fallacy at Work," Point Lookout for January 1, 2014.)
  • Brilliant explanations of subtle concepts are often the result of many refinements of less-than-brilliant explanations. Brilliant explanations are rarely born brilliant.

You probably have a collection like this, but maybe it isn't written down. Something magical happens for me when I write them down. I tend to remember them when I need them. If you haven't written down your collection, try it. First in this series  Next in this series Go to top Top  Next issue: Workplace Politics and Social Exclusion: I  Next Issue

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          human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

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Related articles

More articles on Ethics at Work:

A nervous dogThe Power of Presuppositions
Presuppositions are powerful tools for manipulating others. To defend yourself, know how they're used, know how to detect them, and know how to respond.
ApplesCurrying Favor
The behavior of the office kiss-up drives many people bats. It's more than annoying, though — it does real harm to the organization. What is the behavior?
Archibald Cox, Special Watergate ProsecutorDifficult Decisions
Some decisions are difficult because they trigger us emotionally. They involve conflicts of interest, yielding to undesirable realities, or possibly pain and suffering for the deciders or for others. How can we make these emotionally difficult decisions with greater clarity and better outcomes?
A bristlecone pine in the Great Basin National ParkExtrasensory Deception: II
In negotiating agreements, the partners who do the drafting have an ethical obligation not to exploit the advantages of the drafting role. Some drafters don't meet that standard.
A happy dogMore Things I've Learned Along the Way: V
When I gain an important insight, or when I learn a lesson, I make a note. Example: If you're interested in changing how a social construct operates, knowing how it came to be the way it is can be much less useful than knowing what keeps it the way it is.

See also Ethics at Work and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

A meeting in a typical conference roomComing April 3: Recapping Factioned Meetings
A factioned meeting is one in which participants identify more closely with their factions, rather than with the meeting as a whole. Agreements reached in such meetings are at risk of instability as participants maneuver for advantage after the meeting. Available here and by RSS on April 3.
Franz Halder, German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942And on April 10: Managing Dunning-Kruger Risk
A cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect can create risk for organizational missions that require expertise beyond the range of knowledge and experience of decision-makers. They might misjudge the organization's capacity to execute the mission successfully. They might even be unaware of the risk of so misjudging. Available here and by RSS on April 10.

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