Nugget 5: Sometimes doing nothing is the fastest and most efficient way of solving a problem
Explanation:
Now I know that sounds like a stupid and very Zen thing to say but bear with me.
There is a movie theory that says that in Raiders of the lost ark, Indiana Jones had absolutely no effect on the movie at the end, The Nazis would have still got the Ark and still died when they opened it, This same theory can be applied to a lot of management work.
let’s take a theoretical problem, Something has gone Bang, There are 5 people who would normally be your go-to people to fix it, An email is sent to them but only two respond, The other three are currently busy and not reading emails, The management all get over excited because their email has not been immediately acted upon, They send chase emails, They have individual meetings with each other, They call multiple meetings with all of the 5 people who can fix the problem and by the time they reach all of these 5 people and get them all into concert, they finally get a solution.
Now step back from this, Let’s say that the management had done nothing after they sent the original email, The five important people are already busy, chasing after them doesn’t actually get them any quicker, When they finish their current work they go and have a look at the email, One of them has a solution to it, Provides the solution and then the problem is solved. This normally happens in just about the same time frame as the management running around and doing all the meetings, They haven’t actually made the problem go away any quicker, All they’ve done is waste their time and the time of the few technical people they could get hold of.
So the moral of the story is don’t do knee jerk reactions when your immediate needs are not pandered to, particularly if it’s something that is not immediately costing the company money or can wait a few hours, better to have control than a panic attack.
Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.