2-3-20 working with others: Attribution error

When something goes in the wrong way/ doesn't work as expected …we tend to blame the reason on someone else, and this someone blames it on another person …. Everyone and everything is wrong but us :/

Actually it is almost one of two things:

1-     You are part of this if not the essential cause of what happened and you just don't want to admit that

2-     It is because of inevitable circumstances and the guy you blame is doing his best but that was just out of his control

So before you take action you are gonna regret, collect as much info about this situation as possible, know about the context of this …. Then try to fix it first then blame who is ti be blamed and take action against him (don't reverse this as you may need that person you are going to blame –to fix this situation because things may go wrong when blaming him and he refuses to assist you fixing this)

And if you don't know detailed context about the problem, assume it is due to some circumstances. Unless this kind of behavior/action becomes sort of a pattern with a specific someone, then you are free to take action against him

Also, be fair and blame some of this on you, at least for not foreseeing this coming 

2-3-19 working with others: The secret

It is a test-proven concept about self-filling expectation:

If a leader has expectation for people work with him, make them know this and treat them like this; they will rise up to these expectations

This rule has 4 conditions to work:

1-     You believe that they actually can do and perform better

2-      You make them know this. This is crucial for this concept to work

3-     Deal with them like this

4-     Be reasonable about how good you tell them you expect them to do

And also this work vice versa; the less you expect them to perform, the less they will actually perform

And this has nothing to do with perception or the way you see it, this is tested and compared to absolute standards

But be aware of the cons of this rule:

-          Quality vs expectation: the more you expect them to perform, the more disappointed you will be when they don't live to your expectations

-          Contrast: you may perceive the bad worker that performs better than you expect better than the good worker that performs lower than your expectations; even if the good worker has more productivity and improvement rate than the bad worker >> as it is not a fair compare between the 2 workers, it becomes a compare between each worker and your expectations of him

So, always give your employees a good reputation to live up to and treat them like it. Leader's expectations actually influence the performance of people around him   

2-3-18 working with others: Planning fallacy

This applies on complex plans and things you don for the first time

-          If you didn't do it before, then you don't have much experience about it, and you don't have a good mental simulation because you are missing information and don't know exactly what you are doing, so you tend to underestimate the time it will actually take to do it

It always take more time than expected, for any unforeseen issues, unpredictable tasks, problems to handle, unexpected situations …. Etc.

It is a very normal things and it happens with most people all the time

We are bad at predicting deadlines and milestones time-points, we don't know what will happen in the future … people are almost never on schedule

So what is the solution to that?

-          It is not but extra weeks, months for slacking … BAD IDEA … it will just make people postpone and fit their work into the new extended durations

-          It is not assigning more people to it … communication overhead will just hit the sky and you it will take much longer time

The best solution is to divide the plan into certain small tasks; they are easier to predict … then put a small buffer time for but you don't tell people about it

And probably you will also be late on schedule

Here is the ingenious rule of this:

"It always takes longer than expected, even if you take into account this law"

-          Be patient with yourself

-          Understanding that being always a little late for schedule will make everyone work fast and do their best and there are no intentional slack time

-          Always assume that your schedule isn't quite right

And the best strategy to deal with this fallacy is to understand that:

"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable" 

-          The process of planning  is the actually useful thing

-          Plans are just in-process guide to keep you going in the right direction

-          Deal with plans as processes more than some deadlines

-          Adjust as you go  and deal with them constructively