Just submit a DnD character sheet and be done with it.
What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
51–60 of 77 posts
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#52I think either Adam Bryant (organizational psychology at Wharton) or Erin Meyer (same at INSEAD) turned me on to this idea. I think it's generally a good one to (very slightly) accelerate new working relationships to a place of trust, and the emotional pearl-clutching in this thread is interesting to observe. The best examples I've seen of such manuals (and the best working relationships that have been informed by th…
What these things really do is give the reader an insight into _how you see yourself_
Will that be useful to them? Will that be of benefit to you? It depends
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#53On the individual level this seems absurd. It won't be read before contacting someone new. It will however annoy some people to have specified some arbitrary preferences and then have them routinely ignored by everyone.
Something along these lines is a good idea for a job listing though. Come up with a broad sketch of how the current team works and likes to work, have the team edit it until rough consensus, add it to the job listing. The best I've seen in that direction is https://github.com/symmetryinvestments/overview/blob/master/...
> Qualities and traits we value
Usually this is something vague around inclusivity and niceness. I can't remember the stated corporate qualities of anywhere I've worked, though the reality tends to stick in the mind. Symmetry have not taken that stance. The examples I find most interesting from that section are
> Practical people who are at the same time unreasonable when they ought to be
> Extreme and unusual intellectual capabilities
> Good taste and love of beauty
It's not enough to tell me whether I'd like to work there or not - in particular trading firms are usually obsessed with people sitting in office blocks - but it's higher signal than the usual waffle about everyone working together nicely to make things nice.
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#54[deleted]
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#55I think either Adam Bryant (organizational psychology at Wharton) or Erin Meyer (same at INSEAD) turned me on to this idea. I think it's generally a good one to (very slightly) accelerate new working relationships to a place of trust, and the emotional pearl-clutching in this thread is interesting to observe. The best examples I've seen of such manuals (and the best working relationships that have been informed by th…
Amusing to read that I am "very upset"
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#56This looks to me as the idiocy of the pronouns, on steroids. They both are based on the wrong assumption that people have to ask your opinion before contacting you, while communication has always been based on shared standards. Normality exists. It's not something to tend to, but it exists and must be recognized and respected, and everybody is expected to do their share in conforming to normality.
What is next? Everyone sending forms to everyone to fill and sign before communication
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suspect the real purpose is a form of personal marketing. It's going to end up chock full of resume-style "I am a bright and receptive person, able to communicate well with people at all levels. I use my own initiative and I am flexible in my approach to work duties" boilerplate. Anyone who provides useful information, eg "I'm at my best in the mornings, try to catch me then, oh and dumb down the technical language a…
Why is anyone honestly providing useful information a moron? At least if the "PUM" is in private context.
> At least if the "PUM" is in private context.
Surely it would available, at an absolute minimum, to anyone within the org who is going to communicate with you, otherwise what's the point?
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#58These were popular at my workplace maybe seven years ago, and while I was into the idea at first, IMO it was impractical most of the time. Turns out it's a pretty unreasonable burden to place on people that they should read and follow instructions in a document in order to communicate with someone and to personalize their work approach for every person they interact with. The main context these make sense in is when…
I find that I never know what to write about myself in these. I had to make one for work also a few years ago for similar reasons to you. But when I would read it I could see it represented a part of me, but it's hard to say "talk to me like this" because it depends on what the subject is and who the person is. I found it was interesting to do as a team building exercise because we all did them together and read them…
> it depends on what the subject is and who the person is
bingo.
> because years later some new joiners would read it and think something I wrote in 15mins in a workshop 6 years ago still represented who I was at the present time.
As with any other documentation, you need to spend time keeping it up to date. If you'd upgraded some libraries and added new ones, but still had docs you gave to new team members referencing the outdated libraries... how productive could they possibly be?
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#59It feels clear from the subtext that the value in such a thing would be in communicating where you are generally weak, ie, I don't take criticism well, or I can be pedantic and sometimes all you need to do is ACK my feedback, etc. The examples lack any sort of vulnerability though, they don't introduce any genuine flaws (some of the 'how best to work with me' tips would simply be construed as straightforward praise c…
The weird thing about documenting own weaknesses is that once you have identified them they technically have no reason to even exist (other than your laziness), much less to be grounds for requirements you would force on others. You can learn from my behavior that I don’t take criticism well and then tone it down; however, if I am self-aware enough to know and state explicitly that I don’t take criticism well, to the…
Mmm somewhat, yes. Recognizing a flaw/a need for a change and enacting it is not instantaneous under the best of circumstances.
Re: What Is a Personal User Manual? (2022)
#60I think either Adam Bryant (organizational psychology at Wharton) or Erin Meyer (same at INSEAD) turned me on to this idea. I think it's generally a good one to (very slightly) accelerate new working relationships to a place of trust, and the emotional pearl-clutching in this thread is interesting to observe. The best examples I've seen of such manuals (and the best working relationships that have been informed by th…
Writing this manual just sounds so incredibly tedious. Not only there is nothing much interesting even for me about myself, now I have to find something interesting (and useful!) for others. And obviously, I can't just leave an empty page around. Ugh.