Always under-promise!

You should always under-promise when discussing a commitment or project.  Being ambitious starts with wanting to achieve a new state.  How to get to that state and the path and time needed to get there will always be more complicated than you initially expect.  You move from being optimistic and venture into the land of the naive to expect it to be easier than you anticipate.  I have always found that you manage expectations better this way.   The negativity that you get from missing on delivering something in line with expectations is large.  It is also equal to the gain you get when you can over-deliver with the same outcome but when the initial expectation was lower than the final result.  

This is not a challenge to be lazy or ignore work; the effort put into the task should always be the same: 100%.  But more realistic planning and promises will lead to more of your hard work looking like a success rather than a near miss, and more of your colleagues and friends seeing you as capable rather than unreliable.  Of course you will find those people that are never satisfied and have unrealistic expectations no matter how much you try to show them what is actually possible.  Not sure how to help those people.  But definitely don't be brow beaten into committing to something that you can't complete; that is only going to end up bad for you. 

Rotten Core

Quick!   Get all the puns in!  Rotten to the core or just a few bad apples?  The employee didn't get the fruits of his labor?  Something about the other apples not liking the one green apple in the fruit bowl?  No, that is too far.  Bobbing for discrimination payouts?  What happens when you bite into Apple; you see the worm inside?  I will stop. 

Sharing a post that was forwarded to my account by the excellent employment site HR Grapevine.  If you have not been there, I recommend you check them out, as they have fantastic stories, such as the one below, that definitely fall outside of the stuffy or boring image that HR has with non-HR professionals.  They offer insights into studies, companies and employment practices that can be funny, commendable, deplorable, or simply unique and interesting to anyone that is in employment!

The story is pretty shocking, and obviously you cannot judge a multinational company on one action alone.  At least that is what a multinational company would hope you don't do.  My personal opinion is that if this story is true, and a CEO did ignore this type of behavior in his company, then its as damning as it gets.  

The "leader" responsibility of a CEO is to act as an example to everyone below them, work to remove any such bad behavior first and foremost, rather than ignore it to pursue other projects (i.e. anything revenue related).  Anything else and you then send a clear message; the day-to-day running / making more money for the business is more important than having good company culture, and not having blatant racism towards hard working employees. 

Just to be ultra clear, this story is a non-confirmed single case of racism, where the outcome and all the facts my not have come to light yet.  And yes, businesses really are only obliged to make money; anything else is a "moral obligation" (or legal obligation), not a "business obligation"....

Thanks for reading. 

Thinking too much about work?

How do you know that you might be taking your work mentality home with you? 

A clue might be when you describe something that is really simple; such as towels not drying quickly on the rack in winter; as 'not being able to maintain a 12 hour turnaround cycle on towels'. 

It's even worse if you add 'I am concerned at this operational problem'...

My housemate must think I am strange. He would be correct.