221–230 of 286 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Maybe I should be a developer that just tries to get everything pushed off to someone else, or just reject the work for reasons so that's my only job.
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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…
I really dislike this approach as well. You basically light a fuse on a bomb and place the responsibility on others. Saying "I will do things my way unless someone manages to convince me to do otherwise this within x days" is toxic and places a ton of pressure on your coworkers.
The majority of decisions being made in a company are two-way doors - they can be reversed if needed without great consequence. Those decisions should be made quickly by whomever is close to the topic and everyone else should just be an inform (as a sanity check).
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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
Maybe receiving party should also take active part in understanding the communication so we don’t put whole burden on sender.
Because that’s causing people to stop communicating which is the worst outcome.
I already had couple team mates - that people didn’t want to communicate with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “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…
I really dislike this approach as well. You basically light a fuse on a bomb and place the responsibility on others. Saying "I will do things my way unless someone manages to convince me to do otherwise this within x days" is toxic and places a ton of pressure on your coworkers.
This is a critical skill in big companies where everyone is swamped and busy and things get lost. I do this all the time when I’m dealing with people who don’t answer their email, or who tend to stall and delay approvals, or people who are just very busy. I’ll Email and describe the problem and then say the magic phrase “ 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 a…
> “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…
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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.
> - 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. 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 nee…
I'd fire him > .”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.” No thank you. I'm the boss. Don't push me around
If I showed initiative like this and your response was “I’m the boss. Don’t push me around.” I’d quit on the spot and I sincerely hope you only have lackeys too dumb to understand how detrimental this egoist attitude to your own authority is to productivity and creating organizational value.
People like to say no. (I'm not sure what this cognitive bias is, but anecdotally I agree.)
So, if you can frame your requests in a way that "no is permission", it will often get a red light a bit easier.
Example: replace "Is this a good idea?" with "is this a bad idea?"
Now, of course "not a bad idea" is not the same thing as "good idea", but it's a lot more likely. Even reading that, I imagine most people would respond more intuitively, because it helps us avoid a commitment we don't necessarily want to adopt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “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…
I really dislike this approach as well. You basically light a fuse on a bomb and place the responsibility on others. Saying "I will do things my way unless someone manages to convince me to do otherwise this within x days" is toxic and places a ton of pressure on your coworkers.
This is a critical skill in big companies where everyone is swamped and busy and things get lost. I do this all the time when I’m dealing with people who don’t answer their email, or who tend to stall and delay approvals, or people who are just very busy. I’ll Email and describe the problem and then say the magic phrase “ 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 a…
> "Occasionally someone will come back weeks later, angry that I did XYZ without telling them... " Something fishy about this comment. Apparently you "do this all the time", spelling out the magic phrase you use like a template. Are you sure this is your anecdote and not a projection of how you'd like to be operating at work, as per the main article? I'm trying to imagine the scene where you "show the paper trail" to…
It is alot better when you have someone who keeps track of these changes and says no if needed. As always a drama free work environment makes this easier.