151–160 of 286 posts
It comes down to whether you expect this person really will have objections.
If you are going to do something you believe they won’t approve of, even the most polite wording will not stop it being a dick move and confrontational.
Likewise if it’s something you’re pretty sure they won’t object to, you can probably be quite abrupt and it’ll be fine.
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> “If I don’t hear back from you in [N] days, I am going to do XYZ on [DAY N].” This way I’m not asking for approval and then helplessly waiting and pinging. I feel this tone is needlessly confrontational. You can very well state "II'm going to do XYZ because of [REASONS]. I'm going to do XYZ on [DAY N]. If anyone objects or has any reservations, please reach out to me." This approach also forces you to present a sou…
What about: - If I don’t hear back from you in [N] days, I am not going to do XYZ, considering you don't deem it to be important. >this cargo cult behavior of citing Amazon's leadership principles Technical principles too: microservices. Firm size follow a Zipf distribution, thus in most case the decision was made it wasn't necessary and actually slowed down development.
It's still needlessly confrontational. Why are you accusing someone of failing to understand the importance of something?
Ask yourself this: do you need someone else's input? If you do not need it, you do not need to ask questions. If you feel the need to request input then in the very least you need to reach out to them in a way you value their input.
When they first start they need to be told what tasks to do; then they develop to asking for permission to do tasks that find or know need to be done; and finally they are telling me they are doing a task so I know we are going in the right direction. These changes give much better autonomy within the team and I am know longer the blocker to progress. It also means I can get on and do more interesting tasks myself while working with the junior members of the team.
>Hey, boss, I am going to install action X, which should solve the XYZ problems we’ve been having. Will take care of this on Monday unless I hear differently from you. Great Pete, that means you've finished all the work from the current sprint and from the next and you've searched the backlog and didn't find anything to work on. Otherwise you wouldn't have wasted time on this. Since you have this free time, I have a…
I've found "I presented this project to partners in Risk, Cyber, Compliance, and Legal and received no objection." is quite effective. People in a large company want to know you're working with the right set of people and that nobody is going to be surprised. At some point if a large enough set of people have seen a project and are aware without objection, folks don't want to try to "push back the tide" and a thing w…
I call this “Don’t Ask, Tell” and it has so many uses inside but also outside work. It really is just a basic communication skill to hone. It leads to concise and decisive outcomes. I actually have this conversation a lot with my wife. She’s more of an asker. A recent example from earlier this evening. We had arrangements set to meet a group for dinner. Her style is to send a text to the group, 8 people, saying “what…
I do this too. And it's not just better communication, it's better life. This way I'm not dependent on other people to have fun. I'm not waiting on coordination in order to start doing the thing I want. I'm doing the thing I want, and letting others know that they can join.
I want to get stuff done but I need to raise a ticket, have the priority agreed, and get it planned into a sprint. Then after these layers of 'asking for yes' I am allowed to work on something without scrutiny. Let's say I wasn't subject to this process, my pull request would still need someone to approve it.
Is there a way I can adopt the approach of 'asking for no' with these constraints? Or does it only apply in high autonomy workplaces?
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How do you actually word this? "We plan to defragment the thingamajig on March 1st. We're reaching out to those who might have an interest in case this might cause problems. Please let us know if you have concerns about the defragment. If we don't hear from you by March 1st, the thingamajig will be defragged." Something like this?
I am also wondering this , how can we do this without being confrontational and also not being too wordy that you lose interest
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A manager that organized their team so that each team member makes concrete thought-out proposals with all details covered, so that it's their only job left is to give approvals and do nothing else? I'd say that's a brilliant manager
I agree and that’s how I often get things greenlit. Pro tip: have a quick conversation with a manager and have them make a decision on a $noncriticaldetail before the announcement.
