Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
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To Each His Own
(This article originally appeared in
Computerworld.)
I give a fair number of
speeches for conferences and private IT department meetings, and there's almost
always a chance for questions and answers during the formal presentation.
Afterward, I hang around and frequently get different questions, the ones that
no one wants to ask in front of a big group.
Among the most common are
those about the mechanics of how I write and prepare for speeches. "Where do you
get your column ideas?" "When do you write?" "What time of day?" "Where?" "Do
you use paper or a word processor?" "Do you do outlines?" "Do you rehearse?" "Do
you try out those jokes and stories on your wife?" The permutations are almost
endless.
In many ways, these inquiries
are quite flattering. Someone admires what I do enough to want to emulate it.
(Or perhaps they hate it so much that they want to avoid being remotely
similar.)
But I always answer these
questions with mixed feelings. I know that I'm not giving the interviewers any
truly useful information, because they've asked me the wrong questions.
Rarely do they really want to
know where I sit or how I work. What they do want to know is, "How can I write
and speak in my own way?" Or, "How can I express myself in the pages of
magazines and the platforms of meetings?"
Unfortunately, the only
honest answer to what they're really asking is, "I don't know how you can do
your own version." Just knowing how I work won't really help them much.
I can explain the workings of
the publishing industry. I can tell you about the mechanics of how speeches are
solicited, bought and sold. But, in truth, this will give you no help in writing
funny and enlightening articles or in the art of delivering entertaining and
perception-transforming speeches.
No one can tell another
person how to be most productive when it comes to creative work. The methods are
highly personal. If there were one good way, we would long ago have developed a
surefire process for writing Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. You'd just have to
follow the steps (requirements, planning, design, writing, editing, printing and
so on), and out would pop a work of genius.
It is critically important
for managers of technical staffs to understand this. Most technical work,
despite what many process gurus will tell you, is largely a creative endeavor.
You can slice it and dice it any way you want, but in the end, there's always a
box on the project plan that says, "Magical insight happens here."
If you want to encourage your
staffers to operate at their peak potential, here are a few things you ought to
consider:
Don't try to impose your work
habits on your subordinates.
Most managers got where they
are by being great producers (despite the Dilbert imagery). But just because
some particular approach to work is good for you doesn't mean it's equally
effective for everyone else. Just because you keep everything in folders and
have a clean desk at the end of the day doesn't mean that some people on your
staff won't be much more productive with a blizzard of paper filling the room.
Don't believe that there is
any one right way to do something.
Uniformity for uniformity's
sake isn't a particularly good goal. It may be comforting for you as a manager
to know that all of your staff operates in precisely the same way. Thinking of
people as interchangeable parts makes management relatively simple, but it's a
mistake. You'll be giving up a lot of the value of the individuals on your staff
if you think that way.
Encourage your staffers to
find their own personal styles.
Most technical staff members
want to do things the right way and are constantly on the hunt for best
practices. It's important to let your people know that variations in style are
normal and acceptable. Otherwise, they'll spend lots of time looking for the
least-common-denominator approach, and that saps energy and productivity.
Giving people the permission
and responsibility to find their own workstyles both frees them to search for
their own best practices and sets the expectation that they will produce as best
they can.
