Why Assumptions Can Be Costly

Lesson learned this week: making assumptions or generalizations about people can lead to costly mistakes.

It is generally accepted that the little guy is poorly represented when it comes to policy making or big decisions. They are simply not included, much of the time, and even then, when they are included, their opinions are dismissed as being ill-informed, juvenile, and probably selfish. On top of all of this, when the little guy is asked for an opinion, the higher-ups are surprised when no one says anything. This is an ongoing and vicious cycle that you can see everywhere, from business social structures, to voter turnout numbers. So why do we allow this cycle to happen?

The biggest reason is perhaps the easiest one to see. The person with the power knows they have it, and can pretty much do whatever they want, within reason. Of course, the more in line with their bosses they are, the easier it is to get promoted. Therefore, the obvious decision to make is the one that benefits them the most. Now, this sounds like a pretty heartless assumption to make about people in this position, but that is the point of this argument. Unless a manager really cares about the people below them, this is one of the only metrics left to govern their actions. The only other one left would be the person’s actual opinion of how people should be managed. If the person is strong-minded enough, they’ll stick to that no matter who benefits or how quickly he will get promoted or recognized.

But the promotion ladder is only one explanation for why people on the lower rungs are ignored. Another reason for this is that the higher up you go, the more often you find people who believe the masses simply are not capable of making these decisions on their own, and need someone who is more aptly informed to make these decisions for them. Essentially, it is an argument of maturity, experience and education level. Indeed, it is most likely true that the person in the managerial position betters their subordinates in at least one of those categories, giving them some sort of advantage, but to completely dismiss one’s opinion for those reasons is still the incorrect approach.

A final reason is that the people on the lower branches have given up and simply assume that no one will listen to their opinion, or feel that when they are asked for it, they cannot be honest about it. Though there is some survival-tactic built in to this action (no one wants to give their opinion only to be fired or never promoted for it), it is still unfortunate that this is the normal viewpoint. So what do we do to change this?

Honestly, this entirely depends on the situation or organization involved. Some solutions that would work in one area may be completely inappropriate in others, yet there still needs to be some sort of serious mechanism of change. This might take a little creativity and ingenuity to solve, but it could also be as simple as asking people and being genuinely interested in an answer. If people feel that their input is actually valuable, they will be more likely to give it. Who knows, you may even be surprised by the responses you receive. I encourage anyone in a position to change the mentality of this system within their workplaces to do so. You may not see positive results in the beginning (you may even experience resistance) but in the long run your efforts will not go unnoticed.

Start Something

Lesson learned this week: starting your own business is way more difficult than it sounds.

This past week, a couple of my friends decided that they wanted to start an organization to enter cars in to custom car shows. My usual answer when someone starts off on a venture like this is, “well, do you have a website?” After tinkering around on my Marine Corps website for quite some time, I figured it was time to get into the serious business. After all, this is an area where we would hope to make money. In fact, right of the bat, we will be collecting dues from our members. This means it is time to get serious about this really fast. Okay, so, what’s the first step?

Of course, the first step was the name. Not so much the actual organization name, since that was already decided, but the .com name. Luckily for us, our namesake .com had not been taken yet, so that was pretty easy. Next up was choosing how to host it and set it up. Since we’re just starting out, and would like something cheap and simple set up quickly rather than take the time to set up a complex, super-interactive website, we decided to stick with Office Live. Hard to beat $15/year with so many formats already created for you. So we have our .com, and we have our basic setup. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Mission statement? What’s a mission statement? Well, turns out, it’s a pretty useful thing to have handy. Since this little thing sets the goal and purpose of everything you do, you really want to make sure to start thinking about writing one down. It is equally important not to stray from the mission statement. That is when you start losing focus, wasting time, and either not accomplishing your goal at all, or having a lower-quality product. We are still working on a mission statement, but we’ve narrowed down our focus. Since we only started this week, I don’t feel too bad about not having this done yet, though we should set a deadline for having one at least drafted.

Next up is our logo. Usually this isn’t an incredibly high priority so early on, but I happen to know a couple college graphic artists friends I could tap to help me out, so I decided to take advantage of that opportunity. This is where we learned another lesson. What we might have initially thought was a cool logo idea, might not be cool at all, and either a little childish or far too over the top. In fact, it is probably better to let the artist do his or her job and come up with the design. In the end, this is turning out to be the best option, and is going to yield a far better logo than we initially imagined.

Lastly, we need to make this an official organization. To do this, we need to figure out what we have to do in terms of legally owning our name and establishing ourselves, as well as figure out what to do financially in terms of what to do with the money we bring in and what the spending priorities are. We’ll have a couple meetings to establish this, but for now we’ll focus on building a small team and that pesky mission statement. It should be exciting to see how this goes.

Clarity: Not as Easy as You Think

Lesson learned this week: learn to communicate to a broader audience to get work done quickly and the right way, the first time.

So I took a few weeks off to go to Marksmanship Coaches Course, which was an interesting and fun experience. Upon my return to my work center, however, I learned that I had been moved to a different job in the division with more administrative responsibilities. New challenges, new environment, new boss. What I hadn’t anticipated being a challenge was communication. The difficulty didn’t come in the usual way, where there is either too little or too much, it was simply of a technical and environmental nature that I hadn’t grown accustomed to.

As an example, sometime in the middle of last year, I had to go to one of our administrative offices to acquire a vehicle to take a part to another base. I quickly discovered that, despite how intricately I understood my own situation, how important I knew it was to get this vehicle as soon as possible, and how confident I was that I could convey all this information to my colleagues, I simply could not break down my information into layman’s terms. “But this piece of gear is an ExRep! It’s holding down a bird and we need this van so we can go test this today!” Two things were wrong with my approach.

First of all, I said the word ExRep, which is a concept understood very well by everyone in my division, but not so well outside of it. I should have thought about that before I began my explanation. “There is a helicopter that is unable to fly because we have the only part on base that can fix it, and we need to check it today to get it back on that helicopter. It is of the highest priority.” That is what I should have said.

Secondly, I had forgotten that the scope of my job goes no further than the part that I’m trying to fix. The only outside information I ever get is how many of these parts Supply has on their shelf available. If they don’t have any, than the part we have in our shop is in a top priority status. Makes sense, but what does that have to do with the aircraft? Well, honestly, we don’t know. All we know is that if the part is the highest priority, then it cannot fly if it needs to. We do not know if the helicopter is even scheduled to fly later that day at all, or if anyone is specifically waiting on this particular bird to be flight ready. So what might seem very important to me, might not be as big a deal to the squadron as a whole. Maybe there’s a different bird that DOES have scheduled time for that day, and the people fixing that one needed the van. That would put me in line after them.

It was a good learning experience. You have to be aware of the scope of your job when you do anything outside of your normal environment, because what may seem to be really important to you, may not really be that pressing an issue when you look at the whole picture. Also, learning to explain your situation to someone who does not have your depth of technical knowledge is something worth practicing. If you can make someone else who doesn’t do your job think that what is important to you is important to them, you’ll find yourself winning many more battles.

At this point, I’m on the receiving end of this, since now I have to interpret what my bosses are saying, who have a far greater depth of administrative knowledge (what, so I’ve never used Access before, sue me, I’m learning) than I do. The learning curve is steep, but I’ll reach a plateau soon enough. I hope.