At a logical break from a task which requires focus, I switch to answering mails and chats. One thing that I find difficult to respond to is a series of messages from different people just saying “Hi” or “Hello” or some other one liners which checks ‘how you doing’? People will let me know why are they pinging only when I respond back with a “Hi”.
People are so used to whatsapp communication in personal lives which happens almost instantaneous especially from a section of people who like to be always on. For people engaged in knowledge work, it is extremely hard to have a full duplex communication. The messaging apps have to be considered async first. This means, say what you want to, just like how you write a letter by post to the person expecting long turn around times.
For a remote friendly workplace, first rule that makes it work is async communication. For that to be effective message exchanges have to be rightly sized so that a receiver can read and respond at one go instead of trying to resume the thread once someone becomes available. People should not be available by default for synchronous communication unless they accept a meeting request.
If you have not been an async receiver or a sender, try this for a while – resist the temptation to answer to emails and instant messages immediately as they arrive, best is to turn off notifications for all messengers or any other application. If you receive a ‘Hi’ only message, respond to it in your next window, but resist the temptation to reply synchronously unless you are available.
Stock markets are at high, keeps breaching previous highs every now and then. Economy should be doing well and life should become easy right. I was surprised to see that instead of life becoming good, experiences all around are either stagnant or deteriorating.
Some of the recent experiences I have reflect the new trend. I went to a speciality restaurant for a good dining experience. This was an upscale restaurant chain which gave fantastic dining experiences before for our family. When we went in, we noticed that the restaurant has split into two distinct cuisines (Chinese and Bengali) within the same space with just some seating demarcation. The special food is going to be cooked in the kitchen by the same set of cooks. The ambience had a worn down look with paints peeling and seats torn. When we received the menu, we immediately noticed that the prices have increased by 25-30% and the portion sizes have come down 25-30%. The waiter had no idea on what the menu is about, had no suggestions on how to go about a multi-course meal. In the end, the experience on dining big was just on the bill amount, nothing else. It would have been a better experience having the food from a cheap takeaway and eating it while watching TV at home.
Similar heart burning experiences everywhere. Cabs are not assigned to you during peak hours unless you pay a hefty premium for the same cab. Mobile apps are misusing the notifications feature to deliver ads. OTT subscriptions downgrading you in the middle of the subscription plan to serve more ads. Grocery delivery is sending bad quality produce for regular delivery and introducing a premium feature for fresh produce. The list goes on.
The push from success to excess is evident even in non consumer space. I noticed a recent trend, many executives are asking for a template/runbook based execution so that they can do a lot with very little or no training to the people doing that job. In short they want jobs to be in black & white and easily doable by gig workers who can be onboarded and off-boarded at will just like food delivery. This kind of thinking harms in many ways, one – it starts to increase the need of people who are good at parroting not an original thinker, the other is infusion of a blandness and mediocrity in everything; check for thermometer in amazon for proof. It is not just limited to every day items, even cars start to look the same across brands.
Executives think that they are special and can bring in insane profits by making people do exactly what they say, which may be true in the short run. History says that the best advancements came from grounds up not from top down. The cognitive load that it causes on the executives who do not want their workforce to think because it hampers their execution is huge, it will cause a flameout, momentarily burning bright before failing. Resilience and collective wisdom is poorly understood because it has a very long learning horizon. Being resilient will even come across as inefficient in the short run, but will prevent uncle points.
The more from less mindset that happens through grabby nature instead of advancements and innovations is hard to curtail now, it may be a cycle in the economy. We may have to weather it out before it improves again.
In the early days of my career I have observed professional managers hired to lead the projects in software development, who go by numbers, processes, tasks and objectives, the more and more I observed them, I started to dislike their leadership style as it was very disjoint from what the team was doing. To add more to the dislike, low performers were termed ‘Manager material’ and an option was given them to train on professional management, giving a bad example for leadership aspirants. Not just me, a lot of individual contributors like App developers, QA, Infra developers started to lose the respect for managers as the only leverage these managers had was coercive powers like say on appraisals, leaves, working hours, weekend work etc.
For many years this thought made me stick to being an individual contributor until I was no longer able to push what I can achieve through my work. Work got super boring and monotonous, also started feeling helpless many a times. Long working works, weekend work as a result of poor planning became the norm. At the same time, I read two books – Fish! and Who moved my cheese. These two books just drilled the following points in my head.
Work does not have to be a boring, repetitive, stressful affair
Create a work environment that people along with you enjoy being there and doing it
Change is inevitable, which means I should not resist growing up to managing people, just see how to grow into that role
Comfort zone will make you rot eventually
This made me ready to ditch the individual contributor tag and take up the lead role. To my surprise, my tech skills did not vanish, instead I was able to get better at abstractions and multiple tech stacks. I was able to influence task breakdown, planning, onboarding and knowledge management which in turn created an easy environment for people to work. Better work environment led to less stress and I observed that the team was always in a mood to help each other out instead of hammering away at their task lists. As a result we were able to deliver what was thought to be an aggressive 4-5 month plan in just 2.5 months without breaking a sweat.
It was a great start for me to become a multiplier and shun the fears of becoming a manager. Techies fit the best to lead other techies. Management does not mean pure management, people can manage while still retaining their tech exposure on a day to day basis.
Novi's 