More Things I've Learned Along the Way: VI

This post is a collection of concise insights about organizational life. They're all original to me; they result from incidents in organizational life that I experienced myself, or which involved my clients. They aren't quotations, though it's certainly possible that others have made similar observations. Here they are, in no particular order.

• Including "Please" or "Thank you" is often helpful in everyday conversation. But in text or email, forgetting them can lead to utter disaster.
• Pronouns make everyday conversation easier. But in text or email they can create confusions that lead to delays, waste, and hurt feelings.
• We're always juggling big, important things along with trivial, nearly insignificant things. If you have to drop something, be certain you know which is which.
• Lack of sunlight can affect your mood and the moods of other living things.
• If you know that lack of sunlight affects your mood, take special care of yourself on cloudy days.
• When others strongly advocate for an action despite its obvious and severely negative consequences, consider the possibility that the obvious and severely negative consequences are the point.
• To the person questioned, a pointed question can feel like the beginning of an attack. Asking gentle, open-ended questions can often uncover the information you want with much less risk.
• Even though If you know that lack of sunlight
  affects your mood, take special
  care of yourself on cloudy daysorganizations aren't people, organizations can become addicted to harmful behaviors just like people can.
• Hoping for a miracle might get you the result you want, but miracles are rare. Instead of hoping for a miracle, search for a realistic plan you can believe in. Then, if the miracle happens, great.
• To successfully resolve the matter at hand, assume that you'll need to know something you don't know yet.
• Procrastination is the best way to eliminate options you could have used if you hadn't procrastinated.
• First reports of bad news are often wrong in their details, but we can handle that. What's more dangerous is what first reports leave out. Ask about what the first reports left out.
• We can compensate for one team member making a mistake. And we can compensate for most team members making that same mistake. But we can't compensate for mistakes nobody recognizes as mistakes. Value dissent and show that you value it.
• Sticking with what you know clutters the mind much like hoarding junk clutters the home. Make room for new ideas by decluttering your mind.
• When you hear an especially juicy bit of workplace gossip, know that: 1) It's probably wrong in important ways, 2) You're among the last to hear it, and 3) You were OK not knowing it. Move on.
• Thinking about the here and now in terms of what the future holds is not thinking about the here and now. It's thinking about the future.
• When a kind of organizational resource becomes scarce enough, it gets even scarcer because people begin to hoard it to use as barter for future deals.
• In a meeting, when everyone "goes quiet," they might not be just afraid to speak the truth. Some might also be afraid to hear the truth.
• Experience teaches us how to anticipate obstacles in the path to our goal. Inexperience lets us set out for that goal before we see the obstacles. Sometimes inexperience is an asset.
• When we divide responsibility for a task across several people, we increase the total effort required, because we've increased the need for those people to communicate with each other. Communication is part of the job.
• We're more likely to do something right if we do it together.
• People in constructive conflict focus on addressing the issues. People in destructive conflict focus on attacking each other.
• Humans live long beyond childbearing years, in part, because we need our elders to live long enough to teach us what we are slow to learn.
• Some difficult decisions are difficult because all our choices require us to let go of something we don't want to let go of.

Last words

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   Top    Next Issue

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More 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 Ethics at Work for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming May 14: Working with the Overconfident

A cognitive bias known as the Overconfidence Effect causes us to overestimate the reliability of our judgments. Decisions we make based on those judgments are therefore suspect. But there are steps we can take to make our confidence levels more realistic, and thus make our decisions more reliable. Available here and by RSS on May 14.

And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers

Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.

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