Category Archives: Work

#227 How far you’ve come

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When I hear the phrase, “You’ve come a long way, baby” I think of the Virginia Slims ad campaign. I like the celebration of women’s emancipation. However, I find the use of smoking as a platform to promote women’s emancipation as ironic. But I digress.

We have all come a long way. If you have been keeping records, compare your current photo with one from five or ten years ago. Compare your writing today with the writing from even a couple of years ago. Compare how you deal with tough situations today versus how you used to deal with them early in your career.

Keep a journal so you can track your progress. Keep your documents in an archive so you can fish them out. Not all memories will be pleasant, but you will perhaps be surprised by how bad you were compared to today, and how much better you are today. More important, you may be even more surprised to see how good you were at the time.

You will thus learn to view yourself as an evolving being. You will understand the importance of being open so you can adapt and learn. You will hopefully, be more gentle with yourself when you see a mistake.

Yes, you have indeed come a long way. Women and men alike.

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#226 Tearing down silos

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In the modern workplace, silos will emerge when you or your co-workers get territorial about your role, your resources, or your department. Silos may provide you a feeling of control or calm your fears of becoming dispensable.

In reality, jobs are defined, departments, and hierarchies are set up for administrative convenience only. It improves coordination when duplication is reduced.

However, for many critical problems, it does not matter who solves the problem. A drop in revenue, or profit, a competitive threat, talent attrition, political turmoil, are examples of problems that are not the domain of a single department. Multiple perspectives are required to even understand the problem. Collaboration and partnerships are required to define and implement the solution.

To tear down the silos, the first step is to educate your co-workers about the nature of the problem that is being solved, and show that cross functional participation is required. If anyone shows initiative or interest to solve the problem, provide them the resources, but insist on a transparent governance model.

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