Leadership Pitfalls: Working hard is the path to success

"Work hard, work hard, and work even harder."

Some leaders who are asked to give a lesson on their success to their legacy typically gives this speech. But in my opinion, this is one of the most demoralizing things to say.

First, are they saying those around them did not work hard? What about those who actually did work harder? They also typically add that they are first in, first out. And, they truly believe that.

This claim is very detrimental to morale. Whether you do work harder than everyone else, not everyone may believe that you do. Even the worst employees truly believe they work hard. It is equivalent to asking a person if they are a good person.

Somehow, I sit near these people (at different companies) who say these kinds of things. They rarely are even close to being the first or last people in the office. Not only are they not staying late, they are out the door very quickly. I am not saying that they don't work hard, but don't be claiming to be working more hours than you are. Also, I am typically the last person out the office. I have never been recognized for work effort.

Second, they appear to not understand how success works. Most of us know that success is not only hard work, but also being in the right place at the right time (and many other things). Those who feel that they were passed on a raise or promotion will feel more jilted listening to this speech. These people are now more likely to move on as their talents appear to be not recognized.

Alternative

If given the opportunity to give a speech, leaders should focus on how the company has opened opportunities for people like him to contribute more to the group. Then follow up that the company is working on recognizing current talents and finding new opportunities.

My Sentiments

Most companies have backfilled my role with multiple positions. Also in almost all my roles, I have been the go-to person to backup almost everyone within my team. Basically, I am able to more than my roles but few are able to cover mine (even when I am the most junior on the team). I say this because I can personally say that hard work will not get you anywhere.

If anything, hard work will detriment your success. Working smart also will not help with your success, but it is required. Luck and abusing the system will increase your chances to be "successful". I have talked to quite a few peers of leaders mentioned above. Most of the "success" or break-through achievements are usually based on lies and the ignorance (true or turning a blind eye to save face) of those evaluating their performance.

This appear to be most obvious with government contracts. The strategy for one past company was to simply over-promise knowing they will not be able to deliver most of the items. Once they win the contract, they simply prolong and find excuses by blaming other groups. In my opinion, this was super easy to do because most people do not know how to manage a project. Most people fail to simply just respond to emails. When renegotiating contracts, they simply say that people don't follow up and that is why the project is behind. Also to save face, it is very difficult for clients to change to another vendor unless something went beyond obviously wrong.

Maybe I have warped the definition of success for this article but I hope most readers will understand where I am coming from. I still believe in my values, and still hope I will find a decent group to build my career. I am still in a good place to support myself and those around me. I still wish I can have the opportunity to be promoted to be a leader someday because I believe I can contribute more than other leaders, not because of the status of being a leader. My belief as a leader/manager is to work myself out of the role so that the team will be self-sustaining. If miraculously all leaders are deserving of their roles, I have no problems staying at the "bottom".

What do I want to be when I grow up?

"I want to be what every grown-up wants to be... a kid." James Aubrey (Bones, ep 11.18)
"Someone that has given more than they've taken." Seeley Booth (Bones, ep 11.18)

Other References

http://www.buddytv.com/articles/bones/best-bones-quotes-from-the-mov-60199.aspx

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/06/04/bones-season-11-episode-18-review-the-movie-in-the-making/#7f8c7fb33d64

Money is like salt...

Money is like salt. In moderation, it can enhance life; too much, it can ruin life; without it, life will continue; and without life, it is quite useless.

Work Life: Hire Character. Train Skill.

"Hire Character. Train Skill" ~ Peter Schutz

I saw this quote on LinkedIn and thought it interesting. Although it sounds nice, I have rarely found any company that train any skill sets. Maybe that is because of my limited knowledge of different companies. I would guess that I know about 10-15 companies.

Even with that said, character is still very important in the dynamics of a company. For example, I work very well in an open-knowledge environment where people share information and their knowledge. This is very evident in my current role where the group is slowly converting contractors with employees.

Although it is odd that contractors are more open about their work, I think the main contribution to this difference is the age group. The contractors are a much younger generation than the transferring employees. The employees are coming from a very old technology group that is slowly phased out.

It makes business sense from a 1000 foot view why this transition is happening, so I am not going to delve too much into that. What I find interesting is that the incoming employees are very possessive of their work, but not aggressively possessive. By this, I mean that there are small nuances in their behaviors that make it more difficult for our group to adapt to certain issues.

On top of that, they are very compartmentalized in their view of their roles. Before, we share some responsibilities when we are overwhelmed with a certain task. Thus, we were somewhat interchangeable in our roles. If one of us were out, someone else could easily back up for a small period of time. Now, the new employees are very reluctant to explain what they do and very reluctant to take other work. Oftentimes, they just say that they are too busy with their work.

What I really dislike about this is that meetings now require more people which in turn makes it less effective for each person on the call. Today, there is a call that requires three people from our group because it impacts three different roles. One of the roles is more encompassing the other two which was assigned to one of the employees.

I have been trying to explain that she was the only person needed from the call because she has access to our data. We only contribute about 5 minutes worth value to a 30+ minutes meeting. Although I've explained this, she says that she is too busy to know that information thus requiring us on the call.

It may be possible that she is very slow in this, but I used to manage her role, the one I have now, and other roles. I used to do all that before without a lot of problems (yes, I am not fully utilized now but I use the time to learn the technology and help with other more value-adding processes). Thus, I have a very hard time understanding why she does not have time for something that took me about 4 hours a week to do (I tracked that because her predecessor also had the same time issue).

Even if I was wrong in my assumption and she really is busy, she is also on my daily calls that provides the status to the very information that she needs and something she should be tracking. Of course her excuse is that she is multitasking so does not know what is going on. First, my list is a subset of hers thus there is really no reason for her not to ever be doing something else. In other words, all my items are relevant to her list. Second, if she does not get anything from my meeting then she should not need to join my meeting.

Basically, the newcomers are not as focused in making our time more effective. With each new person, this pattern seem to be normal and also seem to be acceptable. At the same time, the general feel within our entire project group is that quality seem to be decreasing. This has been going on for over half a year.

I guess that was a long way of ranting and saying that character is important because it changes the dynamics of the group. And sadly, I'm not sure if it is better to hire character than skills. Although skills can be taught and character may have greater impact, my reluctance is our ability to understand someone's character within a short interview process. Even then, can any character pick up the required skills needed?

Quote: Linux vs Windows

Linux is to chopsticks as Windows is to fork
Linux : chopsticks :: Windows : fork

I came up with this to describe my experience with Linux and Windows. I am primarily a Windows user and only started using Linux about a week ago. I can see where there are some potentials to Linux that I can make use of but the learning curve is just much higher (in my opinion). Sure Windows crashes more often, but a simple reboot fixes most problems. When Linux crashes, I have absolutely no idea what is going on without figuring out all the inter-dependencies of the application, drivers, and OS. Sure you can eventually fix it permanently, but that's somehow more annoying especially when you're new to the application.

My views on Linux will likely change as I use it more often, but I feel this analogy best describes my experience so far. Starve if you cannot figure out how to use chopsticks, perhaps stab the food if possible. While the fork is easy to use, and you can easily scoop up the food if you cannot figure how to stab it.

Quote: I'm not actually funny. I'm just mean and people think I'm joking.

I'm not actually funny. I'm just mean and people think I'm joking. ~ source

Life: Learning from the negative (Take 2 of infinite)

"Be thankful for the difficult people in your life, for they have shown you exactly who you do not want to be."

I was taught that you could always learn something from anyone. I was constantly reminded in my youth that no matter who I was around, I should learn the good things from good people while learning to avoid bad things from bad people. Of course a little generalized, but the point made it through to me. So stumbling across this quote one day just reminded me the many advises my mother gave me that I did not really take to heart in my more immature days.

I cannot say that I was fortunate or unfortunate. Compared to the friends I have made, I say that that I may have been more unfortunate; but compared to most of the world, I am quite fortunate. Of course, I have jumped between these two things quite often without a satisfactory answer. One day after conversing with a friend about his inability to identify his passion in life, I thought on some of the things I said that helped me enjoy life. I found that there really is no need to identify if my past was fortunate or not. I learned from my past and the only waste is if I didn't take anything positive or negative out of the experience.

There is no reason for me to compare my past life with others. We have all walked different paths. Paths that no other person can fully understand. I look at my friends, each with their own goals or lack of goals. Friends with a harsher life who enjoy life; friends with an easier life who are lost; friends with harsher life living in self pity; friends with a good life still continuing the good life. The only commonality is that the ones doing "well" are those who have embraced their past. Albeit, the last part may be more difficult for some than others. But you cannot change the past, so you cannot just be stuck in self pity.

I digress from a couple points I wanted to make. To the parents, no matter how much I complained about my mother repeating herself and mocking her by repeating the same thing but with a different attitude, I was still listening. Do not give up on keeping your stance. You do not need to answer why or how. The constant nagging, reminder, and repetition are what drove me to understand the full weight of such values when something in myself just clicks with realization that truth behind such values. Someday, I imagine I will also be repeating these same things to an immature version of myself and wonder how my mother ever had the energy to put up with me.

The other point that I constantly wonder about is if I can learn the empathy and kindness that I have without such experiences with "difficult" people. Compared to most people that I am around, I have probably more than average share. I also notice that people in similar situations also tend to have higher empathy. Can someone have the same level of empathy without such "difficult" people? Do these "difficult" people come from the lack of others like themselves? Can I teach them empathy without the use of another difficult person?

Quote: Buddhist Proverb - Student, Teacher

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." 
"When the disciple is ready, the master will appear."
~ Buddhist Proverb

As a teacher, I find this the hardest challenge. I've volunteered as a TA in college and as a coach a handful of times. I've had a couple students where they just do not care for the material. I mean to the point where not a single information even enters their mind. I have often questioned myself how to get it through.

On a macroscopic level, it is better to move on and spend my time with students that are ready. But on a microscopic level, what do I do if I "have" to. There are two main scenarios thus far that boggles me.

Once I had to teach a student who came to my office hour. So this student has already made up his mind to get assistance (or maybe to have me do his homework). After the first time (where I basically walked him to the answer after an hour when it should haven't taken 2 minutes), I made a separate set of questions when he came the second time. The assignment was to create an HTML webpage. The foundation was already there where you just save and the page will come up. The assignment was just to display a specific text, "Hello World" to the page. So I showed him how to display some other sentence, "This text appears here." He typed it in, and there it is on the screen. Then I told him to change the sentence to something else. Refreshed the page, and the new sentence is there. I then told him to put in a third sentence but without giving him the step-by-step instructions... and bewilderingly, he was not able to do it again. I even asked him to put in the original question (basically change it back to what he had before), and still a blank face. The instruction basically is to just replace sentence, save, and refresh. How does someone reach a senior undergraduate level and not be able to do that? Even without that level of education, how do I even break the process down so that it is understandable? I saved the multiple files and told him to take it home to review and review the book again (after 2 hours). He did come back a couple more times but I don't feel that I was very helpful even then.

More recently, I have a coworker (Coworker A) who I believe was hired through connections. He supposedly has over two decades of work experience. I was assigned to train him. I'm not sure how many times I had to repeat myself, resend the same emails with the details of what I just repeated, and he still claims to never have known, trained, or notified. I believe that I am a pretty decent trainer in that I've trained almost all my teammates across several jobs, typically the go-to person on how to do things or better processes, and assistance outside of work. Although I have many speculations on my he may be demotivated to do things professionally, I still patiently go through all the steps if I have time. I have even brought this up with my supervisor who does not seem to do much about it which she normally does. Sadly, this may have been the first time that some frustration may have come across where Coworker A became extremely defensive and said that I was attacking him. I really was just frustrated in that I do not know how to break down the material in such a way to get through to him.

I do not know why some people are this way because even for me when I do not care much for something, I still listen and information still enters my head. When I say do not care much, I really mean that there are certain information I care more for. Perhaps that is the difference in that there is little that I truly have no care for but I think that is more out of ignorance or taking something for granted. Once realized, I still make mental notes of it. So, I really believe that you must first be open to information otherwise, no teacher can assist you... although mentally, I still try to figure a way.

Quote: Happiness

"If you want happiness for an hour--take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day-- go fishing.
If you want happiness for a month--get married.
If you want happiness for a year--inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime--help someone else." (Chinese Proverb)

Quote: True Test of Character

"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do." (John W. Holt, Jr.)

Quote: User Software Testing

User software testing is a phase that users do not have time to do now but seem to have more time complaining about later

Quote: Odds are you are like most people

Odds Are You Are Like Most People

This realization really adds to my perspective on life. Since I've always been pushed to excel, I have always focused on the people ahead of me because you just do not have time to look back. Later on, I find that I cannot meet those expectations and that puts me in a lonelier spot.

The mind is interesting in how tunnel-visioned I can become. When goals are not met, this adds a lot of stress to myself. Then you have a kind reminder from a random person, a random quote, or a random read, that makes you pause, take a step back, and see the bigger picture.

What is the bigger picture? Sometimes, it is just nothing and somehow that is soothing in itself. The wall is still there in front of me, people are still basically the same, and many other things really have not changed. Soon, I picture a myriad of things that really makes me seem insignificant.

Then I zoom right back to my seat, in front of my screen, plugging away at whatever I was working on. Yet, somehow feeling more refreshed. When there is more time, I may zoom in and zoom out of my astral sense several times before returning to work. In retrospect, the exercise almost seems like a workout for my brain. It somehow rejuvenates the mind by "stretching" out its senses. It almost feels like a mental warm-up or a stretch.