thinking/critical

Assuming even a highly trained or long-experienced professional will not require training is also unfair. So much of learning to do a job well is learning the culture and practices of the company – and those things vary dramatically from organization to organization. Just learning the acronyms requires a pocket handbook that to my knowledge no company ever provides.

So, why do I have a growing opposition to the idea of the word idea? Because it’s a word for dilettantes. Anyone can have an idea, and from what I can tell, everyone does. My five-year-old has about 275 ideas each day. My teenagers have a lot of ideas too, though I assume I’m not hearing about most of them. Just last week I was spending time with my nephews Caleb and Owen, who are 4 and 1. Boy, do they have a lot of ideas, most of them funny. So is it the fact that just anyone can have ideas that turns me against the idea of ideas?

So what are good work habits? An extremely important work habit to develop – which is frequently overlooked – is the ability to focus at the right level of detail. Some people only focus on the big picture, and don’t know when it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty. Other people latch onto some microscopic detail and distract the rest of the environment with their inappropriately applied zoom feature. Both types of people have bad work habits (or, perhaps, demonstrate good work habits only a small percentage of the time). If you want to contribute meaningfully to an organizational effort, you have to develop the ability to go from microscope to telescope, and you have to know when ordinary glasses are all that is required.

It’s no wonder that work environments are complex – most people recognize that just having a healthy family requires full-time attention and a lot of willing accommodation. So when you put in one place any number larger than that of a typical family, you have your work cut out for you. Kant observed that we are only behaving ethically when we treat each other person as an end unto themselves (as opposed to self-love, or an end unto ourselves). But in a business, where different people have widely variant views of the desirable group result, it can be difficult to judge when someone is acting from self-interest, from a lack of self-constraint, or from a position of concern for a group result that may be interpreted very differently from our own. Who is right? It will always be a matter of interpretation – even the best history books are subject to interpretations limited by scope of understanding, and sometimes revisionist compulsions.

“T” stands for Thoughtless. The definition of thoughtless is interesting. The most commonly understood meaning is lack of concern for others, and the FETCH manager definitely demonstrates this. But thoughtless also suggests insufficient understanding, a lack of awareness that blinds you to the fact that others just may know something you don’t know. Thoughtless is a good word for the FETCH manager.

Too many companies put a job description together (half the time they just pulled them from a manual somewhere), slap it into a binder, and never look at it again. Because nobody looks at the job description, nobody knows what training is necessary to be successful at the job. This is true for all jobs. So there’s a manager or supervisor who isn’t quite sure what their role is, and they hire employees who aren’t sure what their roles are. Neither of them receive the training they need, and neither of them really know whether or not they are being successful. When does the employee or manager get feedback? When they fail to meet expectations (just what WERE those expectations anyway?) or get on someone’s nerves. Result? Stressed out people.

When one is not well – physically, psychologically, emotionally, or socially (yes, I think there is such a thing as being social well or socially not well – it goes back to the idea that we define ourselves in context of community) – then all of one’s personal resources are turned to either the pursuit of becoming well or the defense against pursuing wellness. That may sound strange, but for many people, it is so scary to confront and eliminate unhealthiness that they’d rather stay with the illness they’ve got than do the work to become well. After all, going from “not well” to “well” is change, and even when change is a good thing, it still scares us.

The difference between Linkedin and the early AOL is actually quite striking. Early AOL was a way to meet people all over the country that you would otherwise not meet. Linkedin is a way of maintaining your own personal network so you don’t lose touch. Does this mean people aren’t staying in touch with their own networks now? That we’ve become so isolated from one another that we need electronic communities to connect?

Am I saying that someone with a discipline problem can’t change? Absolutely not! I could name numerous wonderful examples of former employees who have made remarkable turnarounds related to personal discipline. But did I train them? No! Because it can’t be trained. Discipline can only be chosen.

Some people have opted out of the whole problem by declining to develop computer or technical skills. I don’t consider this an option. Anyone reading this blog would agree that the inability to read or write is a guarantee of economic deprivation. I believe computer illiteracy will contribute to a similar result in the near future (and to a certain extent, already is). If you moved to a non-English speaking country, you could not expect to gain successful employment or integrate into society without speaking the language.