Some More Things
I remembered some more things I wanted to mention about my job.
Problems One thing I noticed right away when I changed jobs is that at Laws R Us we never talk about "problems." We talk about risks (things that might happen that will slow down the project) or issues (things that are slowing down the project). The discussion is about how to avoid trouble or get things going again.
My experience is that talking about "problems" always lead to someone getting blamed. "It's ***'s fault! When you focus on problems you spend all your time discussing the negative side of what's happened and even the people that aren't blamed get demoralized. It's the difference between "Why is this software so slow?" and "How can we make this software faster?" There can be a surprisingly large difference between those two questions.
People do make mistakes. At Laws R Us when we talk about a person who is having trouble on a project, it's always in terms of what we can do to coach the person or in the worst case, whether they would be a better fit in anothe project. I've seen a lot of cases where people pitched in to help their coworker during a part of the project where they were struggling--helping them with their knowledge and experience and a bit of time (but not much since everyone is booked). I don't know of anyone moved off a project because of performance.
I also want to touch on how people work together at Laws R Us. It's a big place with lots of different organizations, different types of jobs with different kinds of skills, and lots of competing projects. There's bound to be politics and some friction but it's surprisingly minimal and hasn't gotten in the way of my projects. I've only run into one truly annoying person and I'm working around that. Otherwise people are very good at what they do and they all bring their ideas and questions to the meetings which is what makes the projects go better.
Meetings Setting up meetings is still the most annoying thing I do. I just set up a meeting that had to include twenty busy people plus some optionals. Getting a time that worked took me parts of three different days including emails to some of the people asking if they could shift their schedules. When I finally had a time that worked I coudn't get a room big enough for the group!! I now have a room that holds about 15 so I'll offer them my teleconference number if they don't want to squeeze. AHHHHH!
I'm pretty comfortable with running meetings now--I mean really running useful, substantive meetings where you get things done but humor and friendship are allowed and encouraged. I do agendas and contact people ahead of time to make sure they're prepared and I cancel the meeting if I don't think there's real business to do. I also do the meeting notes as soon as I can. That's a total turnaround since Widgets.
Top 100 I had my second thank you afternoon on the Terrace at work in recognition of something that I and hundreds of other people did (I'm not sure what we were recognizing). The CTO announced that we are in the 2006 ComputerWorld 100 Best Places to Work survey. I guess this is the sixth year we've made the list. No ice cream this time, just "energy drinks," cookies and candy bars.
Problems One thing I noticed right away when I changed jobs is that at Laws R Us we never talk about "problems." We talk about risks (things that might happen that will slow down the project) or issues (things that are slowing down the project). The discussion is about how to avoid trouble or get things going again.
My experience is that talking about "problems" always lead to someone getting blamed. "It's ***'s fault! When you focus on problems you spend all your time discussing the negative side of what's happened and even the people that aren't blamed get demoralized. It's the difference between "Why is this software so slow?" and "How can we make this software faster?" There can be a surprisingly large difference between those two questions.
People do make mistakes. At Laws R Us when we talk about a person who is having trouble on a project, it's always in terms of what we can do to coach the person or in the worst case, whether they would be a better fit in anothe project. I've seen a lot of cases where people pitched in to help their coworker during a part of the project where they were struggling--helping them with their knowledge and experience and a bit of time (but not much since everyone is booked). I don't know of anyone moved off a project because of performance.
I also want to touch on how people work together at Laws R Us. It's a big place with lots of different organizations, different types of jobs with different kinds of skills, and lots of competing projects. There's bound to be politics and some friction but it's surprisingly minimal and hasn't gotten in the way of my projects. I've only run into one truly annoying person and I'm working around that. Otherwise people are very good at what they do and they all bring their ideas and questions to the meetings which is what makes the projects go better.
Meetings Setting up meetings is still the most annoying thing I do. I just set up a meeting that had to include twenty busy people plus some optionals. Getting a time that worked took me parts of three different days including emails to some of the people asking if they could shift their schedules. When I finally had a time that worked I coudn't get a room big enough for the group!! I now have a room that holds about 15 so I'll offer them my teleconference number if they don't want to squeeze. AHHHHH!
I'm pretty comfortable with running meetings now--I mean really running useful, substantive meetings where you get things done but humor and friendship are allowed and encouraged. I do agendas and contact people ahead of time to make sure they're prepared and I cancel the meeting if I don't think there's real business to do. I also do the meeting notes as soon as I can. That's a total turnaround since Widgets.
Top 100 I had my second thank you afternoon on the Terrace at work in recognition of something that I and hundreds of other people did (I'm not sure what we were recognizing). The CTO announced that we are in the 2006 ComputerWorld 100 Best Places to Work survey. I guess this is the sixth year we've made the list. No ice cream this time, just "energy drinks," cookies and candy bars.
posted by changingagain at 12:03 AM
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