Constructive Feedback

The term constructive feedback is almost always interpreted as negative feedback and especially so, if it is something about you. Different people react differently when they are given feedback for improvement opportunities. Very few can handle it well right at that moment(and by handling I am referring to inwardly not outwardly reaction).

Some others take time to absorb it; they are a little sensitive about others' opinions of themselves but given some time, they get over it. They will then go to great lengths to take improvement actions. 

And the remaining lot, sweat too much over it. They not only get defensive outwardly but also inwardly. And I think that is their biggest mistake. You can defend yourself as much as you want to others, but it will never help your cause in the long run. If there is room for improvement in any area, you might as well take a look into it. Or you'd wake up one morning and realize that you have not been learning anything over years.

I know each of us has a different personality and different ways of dealing with our work. But it is only by continuous improvement that one day we can look back and be proud of the trail we have left behind.

Honor your commitments!

At home:

Wife : Did you talk to your boss about taking a vacation next month?

Husband: No, I did not.

Wife: Why not? You were going to do it last week. Now we will be late in booking tickets. I really want to be able to see my parents this year. You can't do one thing right for me!

Husband: Stop nagging me about it! I tried bringing it up last week but everyone was quite stressed out with the project deadlines then.

Wife: Well, you could've just told me! You said you will do it and you didn't. If you just thought of letting me know, I wouldn't be that upset. You know how much this means to me. I haven't seen my family in years. It seemed like you didn't care about it.

Husband: I'm sorry. I guess I should've informed you. I didn't realize you were waiting on me to make a decision. I know it's uncomfortable not knowing what our plans are.

At work:

Manager: Liz, are you done with the software update yet?

Liz: No, I'm not. None of the test benches were available this week and so I didn't get any debugging time.

Manager: Well, why didn't you let me know that your work was impeded? I am responsible to get the software released next week and we are not done yet.

Liz: (getting all defensive) I was working overtime just to get this delivered but it's not my fault that the other group was using the test bench!

Manager: I am not blaming you for not working hard. Everyone in this office is very hard-working. But, if only you had given me a heads-up, I would have been able to either help you out or planned for a late release. I want to you understand that if you can't keep the date you committed to, let me know beforehand. It just gives me enough time to react to impediments and change the plan. Honor your commitments or don't commit to something you can't do!

Liz: I see why you are so upset now. I assure you this will never happen again.

 

Are you a goal keeper?

Sometimes we get so involved in our mundane tasks that we lose focus of our goal. Whether at work or at home, I am sure we have all been through times like these.

Let me share a story with you. I am part of this workplace improvement group at work. We organize fairly good seminars and events to help employees develop themselves and make the company a better place to work for. But lately, the activities of the group have either been very repetitive or unrelated to where we all started. Rarely have I seen people question why we host certain events or what we really want to achieve with them. Not to my surprise, the attendance of members themselves has drastically reduced at these functions.

Although we all have good intentions, the good hasn't been well-defined. There is no roadmap. There haven't been enough questions like "Why are we exactly here?"

Another story from one of my older employers-

One morning my boss called me and asked me to work on this so called extremely important assignment. The sense of urgency in his voice was very evident. I listened to him for a while and asked him only one question at the end. "Why do you want me to leave everything and work on this right away?"

His answer was, "Well, because my boss told me to do so. What would you do if your boss called you and said that something is urgent?"

I almost laughed before I said "I would ask her the reason behind the urgency!"Of course, I explained to him why what he thought was urgent was really not a big issue and we had a bit of a discussion over it.

Once again, no surprises! It turned out that the assignment wasn't an urgent one after all. Someone higher up panicked due to a customer complaint and it trickled down all the way to us lower beings. Many layers of people in between never asked the question – why?

It is so easy to go on auto-pilot sometimes that we forget which direction we are going in.

Anyway, if your boss is as good as mine, ask him why? If your family is as good as mine, question them why? And if you have been diligently working on something, definitely question yourself why? Don't ever lose sight of your goal!

Simplicity

I have noticed this attitude in every company I have worked for. Whenever people are bragging about company products, the conversation is all about highlighting things like –

1. how many features the product has
2. how slick the user interface is
3. how a certain 'latest' technology or paradigm was used
4. how complex the system is or
5. how smart the guy behind the design is(that he could make such a complicated system work). The more complex his design is, the smarter the designer must be.

But I have never heard someone say something like – "Look how simple the design is!" or "Look how comprehensible it is that anybody can pick up where they have left and sustain this product. Imagine how much money it would save us in future"


As I see it, features can always be added to a product at any point; cosmetic appearance can always be polished. But simplicity and robustness of a system is not only hard to achieve but it is something which we cannot easily 'fix'.


Why can't we then 'show-off' or take pride in our simplicity? Does it not sound cool enough?

Good promotion or Bad promotion?

Last week, some of us represented our company at a career fair in a reputed school in California. Our neighbors were from an organization that is into social media and very popular among students these days. They were giving away free t-shirts which people seemed to take quite a liking for. At about noon, when the crowd started dispersing for lunch, a relatively older looking lady stopped by their booth. She did not look like she was interested in looking for a job at the fair. She seemed to be awed by their impressive booth design. She probably fancied getting one of those free t-shirts too. She approached them and asked for a t-shirt but the gentleman behind the booth snapped “Ma’am these are only for students!” 

She patiently asked him “Why is that? What is the purpose of the free giveaways anyway?”

He said “They are meant for students to keep. It is a company initiative for marketing our brand name in the student community.”

She replied “Well, my friend, you seem to have decided that I am not good enough to promote your brand name. With today’s experience, I have not been left with much to say about your company. If one of my students asks me about you, I wonder what my response would be. Do you think you have done a good job at brand promotion today? Or do you think you may have lost a great marketing opportunity?” And just like that, she left. 

Isn’t it amazing that every time we interact with someone, we convey a message. This message could do a good promotion or a bad promotion of who we represent. At events like trade shows, we are an image of our company. At global events, we are sometimes an image of our country. In a much more personal group, we are an image of ourselves. What do you want your image to look like?

The tale of trust- part 1

Raj is the new engineer in the team. He is working on the most talked about project in the company. Samuel is helping him come up to speed with the company products. Sam is about to review Raj's first ever written code in this company. Raj is a bit nervous about his first code review but trusts Sam a lot. He has always helped Raj through the tough situations so far. 


The review goes on for three hours. Sam finds at least 40 places where there is room for improvement. A brand new hire would usually get really upset about it. But Raj trusts Sam. He knows Sam's intentions are good. He wants Raj's first project to be a success, he wants the code to be as problem free as possible, and he knows how much small bugs in the code cost the company later in the product's life. He readily accepts that some of the areas need to be improved but defends his case on some parts of the code. 


Now Sam, in return, trusts that Raj is a good engineer and has a good reason for his defense. He says "Some of my comments are only my preferences on how things could be done. Whether you accept them or not is completely at your discretion. I fully trust and support your decision."

Are these imaginary people talking? I've personally known people like these for a while now. So, can we all try and trust that our co-workers are trying to their best? 


The bigger question is - Can we all trust that people around us have better intentions in mind than we think they do?

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

That is the name of a bestseller by Patrick Lencioni.
Alexander manages the software team in California. These are the five dysfunctions of a team from a management book he read.

• Absence of Trust 
  
• Fear of Conflict
  
• Lack of Commitment 
  
• Avoidance of Accountability 
  
• Inattention to Results 
  

"How do we use this information? How can we make them the five building blocks of a high performing team? For now let us list them out for the group."

• Trust
• Constructive conflict
• Commitment
• Accountability
• Attention to results

Okay, now what? We'll work on one at a time. Just like Alexander worked with his team.