[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man — he loves to see him work. Winston Churchill
Posts tagged Work
Computers
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
Anonymous
Bird eye view
In day by day work, it’s easy to sink yourself in a low level view, while It is important to maintain a bird eye view.
This means not having a “satellite” view seeing things at highest level, nor to have a low level view focusing only on details.
Bird eye view behaves like a traveler on an helicopter, making you see thing high enough to see the big picture but maintaining the ability to go deep enough to catch details needed.
Try to raise your sight and you will understand more and give a different sense to what happens.
Networking
Networking is in its broadest meaning, one of the used and abused concepts of our times.
Quite everyone needs to communicate and to be linked to others in many ways: from paper letters of good old times to twitter.
But there are at least two different levels of networking:
- The first one is networking for pleasure, includes lot of medias and comes from the pleasure of sharing with others experiences, thoughts and ideas. It’s what I’m doing right now with you: share some thoughts and some of my management experience just to have a discussion for my own (and hopefully your) growth.
- The second one is networking for work and is quite different
Let’s focus for the purpose of this discussion on this second one and get some thoughts and tips:
- Size doesn’t matter (at least in this case): It is a false myth that the more you are networked the more you’re powerful. Instead It is better to have less connections but trusted and reliable than being plenty of contacts you cannot access nor trust
- Social networking is the beginning, not the end: SN could be a great place to find people with similar interests, but to build a real network thing should go further
- Don’t fake, it’s your interest: could be the simplest rule, but is the one most of the people are not following. We see lot of people on the net and in real life, faking informations on they’re work or situation. But doing so increases only you chances to be un-masked, while flattening the overall perceived level of the people you’re networking.
- Search for quality instead of quantity: again too much contacts of poor quality don’t help you reaching your goals. Try to be rational in building your business network: what you need? Where you can have access to similar people?
- Don’t exchange unless you’re sure: sharing networks is easy as demolishing your own credibility and trash the times and effort you spend in building relationships. Try to present people to your trusted contacts only if you have a very deep understanding of them and they’re goals. Otherwise put on table from the beginning your role, avoiding to fall in the trap of being the Troy horse for someone else.
Astronauts
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft … and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
Wernher von Braun
Success
If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
Yell or not?
Yelling is not good, but sometimes happens and knowing how to deal with it helps in limiting the damages.
All of us met at least once in our lives one that while discussing has started yelling.
The reaction is quite different from person to person and depends a lot on three things:
- the “contents” of yelling: in my experience, while I don’t consider too much inappropriate behavior yelling (within a reasonable limit of course) in a discussion on a working matter, I tend to be very upset when the discussion (and so the yelling) goes on personal matters
- The level of personification: I observed that part of the people tend to get very upset in discussion if the “attack” shifts from working (e.g “this thing is not done as I expected”) to personal (e.g. “You didn’t do this well”).
- On your and others expected reaction after discussion occurred: this means that in some cases (including me
), 10 minutes after finishing the discussion the mind is reset and I can start over discussing in a normal way
So my quick tips are :
- Try to slow down and calm the tones as a first approach
- Do the battle if you can handle it (so yell back if it really make sense but also if you can do it without feeling yourself even worse)
- Try to think before start yelling back
- Consider the reactions
- Do not go personal any time
Committees
Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.
Anonymous
Executives skills
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.
John G. Pollard
Work and eggs
“I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.”
H. L. Mencken
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