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Trust your employees enough that as soon as something goes wrong, they will let you know. Don't expect them to wait until the end of the week to alert you of so

Trust your employees enough that as soon as something goes wrong, they will let you know. Don't expect them to wait until the end of the week to alert you of something, that makes no sense.

true_religion 10y ago
In my experience, people find something is going wrong then enter a temporal vortex where they only focus on fixing this problem. They will then emerge on a Friday at 4:30pm, to tell everyone. But joking aside, plans that rely on trusting everyone to act in a certain unwritten way aren't very reliable. It's like how one study showed that mistakes during surgery went down by a significant degree if doctors simply compiled a checklist of what they were going to do beforehand---even if they had done the procedure hundreds of times before. People, in the middle of working on hard tasks are not very reliable. That's not to say they're not smart, or professional, or lack care for their coworkers. It's just a fact of human nature that we solve problems in whatever organically directed way makes sense at the time, and not what the 'best over many averages' way would be.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Apparently the real takeaway from the checklist research was that other people, usually lower status employees like nurses knew that the doctor was about to amputate the wrong leg or whatever, but the dysfunctional working relationships made it very hard for them to point out idiotic mistakes being made by the big shots without endangering their careers. The checklist is only there as a public contract that "if I don't do X, then anyone who points that out is doing the right thing". This is both more frightening, and more insightful, than the "people forget to do stuff" lesson (though that is true too). http://beyondthechecklist.com/2013/03/thank-you-for-pointing-out-the-mistake/ http://beyondthechecklist.com/2013/03/thank-you-for-pointing...
- bmj 10y ago
  There's also a potential cultural issue, where someone may feel like asking for help, or pointing out an obstacle, but thinks it may reflect poorly on them.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  In my experience, people find something is going wrong then enter a temporal vortex where they only focus on fixing this problem. They will then emerge on a Friday at 4:30pm, to tell everyone. If you're a manager, then the reason they do that is because you intimidate them. They're afraid to tell you when something goes wrong. This is YOUR problem. plans that rely on trusting everyone to act in a certain unwritten way aren't very reliable. That's the only possible plan that can work, because you can't write everything down. At some point you have to trust.
  - true_religion 10y ago
    If I were speaking as a manager, I would have already done something about the issue. But no, I'm talking about people that I have worked with, but not managed. And these aren't 'dysfunctional' teams by any objective measure. These teams were formed from reasonably competent individuals, typically turned in their work on time, and had comfortable social dynamics. Yet on the rare occasion that a problem cropped up.... ah we didn't always take the best approach to problem solving. ---- There's a story I heard about firefighters. They did a study on veterans to find out how people operated under pressure. The researchers thought in the face of a burning building, surely the fire-fighters wouldn't be able to do an in depth search of all possible solutions, so they'd just compare the top-two that they thought of. Seems reasonable. In reality, the they just went with the very first solution that they didn't imagine had fatal errors. That's how people are... under pressure, we go with the first thing that might possibly work, not the best thing. That's why we need to think about problem solving techniques, before problems actually occur.

Trust your employees enough that as soon as something goes wrong, they will let you know. Don't expect them to wait until the end of the week to alert you of something, that makes no sense.

true_religion 10y ago

In my experience, people find something is going wrong then enter a temporal vortex where they only focus on fixing this problem. They will then emerge on a Friday at 4:30pm, to tell everyone. But joking aside, plans that rely on trusting everyone to act in a certain unwritten way aren't very reliable. It's like how one study showed that mistakes during surgery went down by a significant degree if doctors simply compiled a checklist of what they were going to do beforehand---even if they had done the procedure hundreds of times before. People, in the middle of working on hard tasks are not very reliable. That's not to say they're not smart, or professional, or lack care for their coworkers. It's just a fact of human nature that we solve problems in whatever organically directed way makes sense at the time, and not what the 'best over many averages' way would be.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
Apparently the real takeaway from the checklist research was that other people, usually lower status employees like nurses knew that the doctor was about to amputate the wrong leg or whatever, but the dysfunctional working relationships made it very hard for them to point out idiotic mistakes being made by the big shots without endangering their careers. The checklist is only there as a public contract that "if I don't do X, then anyone who points that out is doing the right thing". This is both more frightening, and more insightful, than the "people forget to do stuff" lesson (though that is true too). http://beyondthechecklist.com/2013/03/thank-you-for-pointing-out-the-mistake/ http://beyondthechecklist.com/2013/03/thank-you-for-pointing...
bmj 10y ago
There's also a potential cultural issue, where someone may feel like asking for help, or pointing out an obstacle, but thinks it may reflect poorly on them.
ktRolster 10y ago
In my experience, people find something is going wrong then enter a temporal vortex where they only focus on fixing this problem. They will then emerge on a Friday at 4:30pm, to tell everyone. If you're a manager, then the reason they do that is because you intimidate them. They're afraid to tell you when something goes wrong. This is YOUR problem. plans that rely on trusting everyone to act in a certain unwritten way aren't very reliable. That's the only possible plan that can work, because you can't write everything down. At some point you have to trust.
- true_religion 10y ago
  If I were speaking as a manager, I would have already done something about the issue. But no, I'm talking about people that I have worked with, but not managed. And these aren't 'dysfunctional' teams by any objective measure. These teams were formed from reasonably competent individuals, typically turned in their work on time, and had comfortable social dynamics. Yet on the rare occasion that a problem cropped up.... ah we didn't always take the best approach to problem solving. ---- There's a story I heard about firefighters. They did a study on veterans to find out how people operated under pressure. The researchers thought in the face of a burning building, surely the fire-fighters wouldn't be able to do an in depth search of all possible solutions, so they'd just compare the top-two that they thought of. Seems reasonable. In reality, the they just went with the very first solution that they didn't imagine had fatal errors. That's how people are... under pressure, we go with the first thing that might possibly work, not the best thing. That's why we need to think about problem solving techniques, before problems actually occur.