Some of my consulting experiences have felt like I was meeting crazy in-laws for the first time. Once I step into their "home" I can feel the dysfunction. The unloved children, the favorites, the ones who feel entitled. Some people walk by you without saying a word; some seem put out by your presence; some seem seriously worried. You represent a manager's decision that maybe some people don't respect, or a position that someone in the company was vying for that she didn't get because you were hired instead, or a reiteration of a project that has been done unsuccessfully many times before.
You never quite know what you are going to get when you walk into a company you haven't worked for yet. However, the past two days I've worked with a client that was--dare I say it--a pleasure to work with.
When we arrived, we were welcomed and given a tour. The CEO apologized for having another commitment, which simply meant he sometimes had to tap on his computer while sitting with us and participating in our two-day meeting. His general manager had provided a packed agenda, a thorough presentation and outline that he'd stayed up all hours to complete in-time for our meeting, and he made sure that the necessary people had cleared their schedules and joined the meeting at appropriate times to provide their expertise or ask questions that related to our discussion.
The quality of the discussion was also excellent. We were not subject to a six- hour presentation; we were engaged in a discussion that submerged us into the development of the product. The CEO and General Manager were willing to take a few steps back and consider everything we suggested, or even consider new assumptions behind their product. We felt we were truly filling a need. And though these people were tech heads, they didn't hover over their laptops to check email; the only cell phones that rang--oops--were ours. Everyone stayed engaged. They were respectful of our schedules and checked in with us to see when we wanted lunch and when our flight was due out. They took us to some local favorite places for lunch and dinner.
While amazing BBQ isn't a requirement, I'd use Marc Orchant's concept from his essay in More Space and say that this company was the example of work that wasn't broken--of smart work.
Marc does a great job of breaking down the particulars of why work is often broken. I'll name a few that resonated with me.
Shallow, superficial communications. People aren't clear about what they want because they don't actually know what that is; they expect you to somehow figure it out and perform to some nebulous standard.
This reminds me of a boss I had who couldn't tell me what she wanted me to change in an editorial section I had been hired to "fix." All I knew was that, in her mind I "got it" about the company and should be able to do a good job. Iteration after iteration of proposed changes were drafted, presented, and always rejected. I never had any good reasons why, they just "weren't quite there" yet. If she did give me specifics I'd add them to the next spec, but those were always "never quite there" as well. Perhaps I didn't get it like she thought I did, and pehaps she needed to sit down and think about what "getting it" really meant. She didn't really have an outcome--a metric, a goal, a feeling--that she wanted to evoke. She hoped that I would provide it for her.
Failure to follow through. I've been amazed sometimes at how little real commitment I've seen while working for smart people. I've seen managers promise things they could't fulfill, or worse, things they never intended to fulfill. Working for people like this is like dating a guy that looks good on paper, is charming in person, but never calls when he says he will, or consistently bails on dates he sets up. Something is fundamentally wrong, and unless it's addressed, you are in this constant, questioning mode of wondering, is it me? Am I the reason why things aren't getting done?
I worked at a company where meetings started so notoriously late that the "on-time" people commonly showed up 15 minutes later than scheduled. The manager often rescheduled meetings so often that few knew when to actually meet, and only a handful of people would show up. Sometimes the manager forgot his commitment, and those who showed up wondered, "Did I get the time wrong?" Then, notoriously, when situations became dire we'd get shuttled into long blamestorming sessions, where we'd have to answer for why things weren't done. No one took responsibility for the culture of non-commitment, indifference and blame.
Inefficient email practices. Companies often designate email as a personal tool--you use it how you need to, in whatever way will help you do your job faster. Barring controls on personal or illegal email dispatches, companies rarely take an active role in helping employees manage it. As a result, we unintentionally complicate our lives--and the lives of our co-workers by shooting off messages without relevant subject lines, or long, stream-of-consciousness emails, or open-ended emails that pose more questions than they answer. And then we get pissy with people when they don't get back to us right away with the information we need.
When it comes to email I'm hardly a purist. I have hundreds of non-urgent newsletters in my TO READ inbox, and dozens more that need to be filed away. I often have subfolders in subfolders that seemed brilliant when I set them up (somewhere in the bowels of my in-box I set up a "Culture" file, where I'd move all emails relating to books, movies, or museum exhibits that I found interesting. It remains empty and has been replaced by other files I set up for the same purpose). Some of my filing systems are three, maybe four levels deep, which may explain why I don't bother filing some of my older emails anymore. Who has the time?
Marc's company uses a message tagging system that lets people know the crux and urgency of a message--very helpful. I don't work in a company and can't very well expect everyone who emails me to comply with any system, but his piece made me understand the importance of system management on an individual and group level.
More of Marc's thoughts on productivity can be found here or here. The time and task management course that he developed for Microsoft with Jeremy Wright is available here.
Ah, Failure to follow through! I remember attending meetings with an old boss and he would promise things while I sat there wondering how the hell I was going to do that. Half of it sort of got done in the end but he never really listened to the client (colleague) and I don't know that they were ever fully satisfied.
It was very frustrating for me cause I just knew it wouldn't and couldn't be followed through.
Posted by: jen | December 04, 2005 at 05:47 PM