Today, we have a few words of warning on making a project, or your whole job, look easy.
We have all heard the proverb "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", so cynics could argue it's your own fault if you fail to explain complexities and challenges correctly. You may have your very own examples of failure to do so, complete with feedback along the lines "well, if you had told me <whatever the issue> early on..."
But there is a lot more to it, including occasions when it was perfectly clear that the friendly "if you had told me" was probably a lie. Again, there's a good chance you've used that one, too - the blogster has, for whatever good or bad reason.
Let's assume a project is well defined, gets done on time, and the customer or client is happy. You even hear that your manager bragged about yet another great delivery out of his department, and he congratulates the team in the next department meeting.
And then, the counter intuitive happens: the manager begins to show signs of hostility towards you or the team. The blogster has seen such scenarios play out, either directly affected or as an observer.
They were always about power, control, and hierarchy.
Smarter minds than the blogster have advice for dealing with serious workplace conflict, and there's always Dilbert.
The only piece of advice, the blogster feels comfortable giving anybody in this situation - subject to the caveats in The best three words of all time: I don't know - is to try and find out your manager's need for power and control as soon as you start working for him or her.
Other workplace behavior posts on this blog are much more entertaining, for
example on the use of private cell phones and smart phones as a
parallel infrastructure to Hide your s@&*, or about the finer points of Management by email forward. Two outright cheerful ones describe how one employee set about Getting a raise and how communication between people from different cultures can be Clueless with dictionary.
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