Chris Guillebeau offers his e-book 279 Days to Overnight Success for free on his blog. This is a great piece of writing that debunks the popular myths about “making it” blogging.
See for yourself – download it today.
Communication Overtones asks “What do you do when you are sure you are right about something but your boss won’t listen to you?” Any manager worth his salt knows to surround himself with talent that will compliment his own skills – he will draw from the experts around him to formulate his plans and direction.
Experienced managers also learn to trust their own instinct even when the advice from the experts is contrary. So what do you do when your manager has decided to go with their own judgement even though you are sure they’re wrong. After all, you’re being paid for exactly what you are bringing to the table, so where is the sense in overriding your recommendation?
There are a few ways to proceed:
Plant the Seed
By “planting the seed”, I mean be subtle about your course of action. Let your manager know what you are thinking and leave it at that. It will get at them subconsciously until they come at you weeks later with a great new idea that sounds suspiciously like the one you had brought forward.
Be Patient
When you plant seeds, you need to be aware that it takes time for your point of view to enter your boss’ mindset. Depending on the concept and its complexity, it could take months for this passive approach to take effect. You could say this technique only works for non-critical ideas, but that isn’t necessarily true – it only works if you have enough patience to let your course of action sit.
Let It Go
Because this technique is a passive method for subordinates to get what they want out of higher-ups, you need to be prepared to let your idea get overridden. If your manager truly sees fit not to invest in your idea and you can’t make them come around to your point of view then your two options are either to put your ego aside and accept it so you can move on, or find another manager/company who want to run with it.
Much of the professional world has switched over to a two-monitor setup. I can’t even begin to imagine how I ever did with just one since I am now so used to having a help or a search open just outside of my main viewing area. Having reference material in my peripheral vision but accessible just by turning my head is much faster and less disruptive than having the fumble around the task bar and switch the focus of my attention.
It is said that switching tasks takes time – some users report productivity reductions of up to 15 minutes each time they have to change their focus of attention. If a programmer has to look at the documentation only once per day, their employer is looking at 1.25 hours of lost productivity every week, which may not seem like much but when extrapolated to that person’s yearly wage (averaging at $78k) the cost of the lost productivity is worth approximately $2400; much cheaper to buy that $500 monitor. For the general programmer, you can get by with less – a 17-inch LCD retails for less than $200. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
The same logic can be applied to the purchase of an entire system. What is the productivity cost of having to wait for downloads and load times over the cost of a new system? Even if no new revenue is generated by the company directly as a result of the software or hardware purchase it can be worthwhile to invest in new equipment. Why hire someone and not provide them with the best tools possible to do their job? It’s kind of like putting a Mazda engine inside a Ford (wait a minute…)
There was a time in the early industrial revolution when buying equipment and machinery was prohibitively expensive, and people could be trained to keep old hardware running for many years in order to maximize that equipment’s value to the company.
Today the reverse is true – computer hardware can be acquired at a fraction of a cost of the person needed to run it – and the training involved in having someone fill the shoes of a departed worker can be crippling to the bottom line of a business. Instead of trying to make machines last as long as possible it should be the priority of any manager to make the people last as long as possible. In a world where individual jobs are replaceable and just a stepping stone to “something better”, volumes are said by the simple act of someone staying in their role for a prolonged amount of time – both about the worker and about the quality of the employer they give their time for.
Several months ago I wrote about the pros and cons of working from home. At the time I focused on the employee working from their home for an employer. Working from home for yourself is a totally different ball game; right now many people are experimenting with the idea of working from home by writing posts for online publishers, especially blogs.
The concept sounds great: write about content you are interested in, choose your own hours, make time for family, answer to nobody (except perhaps client deadlines). Make money continually for previous writing – financial freedom at last!
Is “professional blogger” the next logical career path? I don’t think so. The concept is simple enough: build a site, drive traffic, make money. I suspect most people can even accomplish step one very easily. The ever-changing methods for driving traffic and monetizing content require a significant investment in time that is beyond the reach of many people with full-time jobs and other obligations.
The common advice for aspiring bloggers is don’t quit your day job, ironically this goes against the fact that in order to generate a reasonable income from the medium one would need to devote the equivalent of full-time work hours to the process. The two worlds don’t fit together particularly well; like anything else with a low barrier to entry, many people will occupy the lower echelons of the blogosphere while only those with the talent (and/or luck, if you will) and time (endurance?) will rise to occupy the 1% top of the heap.
We rented Baby Mama this weekend. I was happily surprised to find PC Guy in the role of the fertility doctor – perhaps a nod to Mac Guy’s film appearances. It warms my heart to see those references transitioning into the cultural lexicon. All this got me thinking about Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign; there have been some funny ads circulating around the net lately, including some Flash videos seemingly spreading between ad spots (how do they do that?).
The newest byte is that due to a shortage of trained developers, talented programmers can earn $125-$200 per hour by developing iPhone applications. Unbelievable! Where is my old iBook when I need it – buried under a stack of music CDs with an old version of OS X that doesn’t support the iPhone SDK. Maybe the time is right to spring for a new laptop if there is a potential to earn $250,000 by creating a decent marketable application. Gold rushes like this don’t act long – talk about striking when the iron is hot!
Given the oportunity, your boss and your client would add so many requirements to your project that your only hope to meet your deadline was to forsake your personal life and donate your evenings and weekends to your job.
This is uncool. Unless you’re in Houstin trying to bring home Jim Lovell, no one’s life but yours hangs in the balance of your work. I urge everyone to ask themselves how important, really, is their function. We tend ot build up walls around us and believe that our problems are big deals, but the reality is that in ten years we won’t remember what we did at work today.
So next time you’re asked to add “one more feature” to your prototype, decide if it’s best for the project, and if it’s possible for you. It can be hard to say no, but humans weren’t intended to sit in front of the computer programming meaningless crap all day. Go out and enjoy your life!
Kudos to this article for acknowledging MUDs as the source of the term “SPAM”: A very unhappy birthday to spam, age 30
Now that spam has been with us for 30 memorable years, let’s take a moment to think of all the great things spam does for us:
Not to mention it has become Nigeria’s chief export.
