Tom Breur
29 January 2017
“Just get this done, first, please” is one of those requests
you may hear, from time to time. There’s a time and place for “just” following
orders, the proverbial run to the fire escape being one of them. And if you
have blind trust in your colleague’s superior judgment, I guess that is fine, too.
Nothing wrong with being obedient.
Although there may be lots of occasion where “not thinking”
could be the right approach, I feel it is training the wrong muscle. Admittedly,
ongoing critical (negative) quizzing of priorities and responsibilities can be
toxic. In general, in find especially the going-back-and-forth, recalibrating
of urgencies and priorities, repeatedly and incessantly focusing on questions
like: “what is it that we are trying to accomplish?” what make co-located teams
so much more effective. At least that has been my experience.
To me, the converse of great teamwork as manifested by iterative
and incremental discovery of requirements and priorities– is a head down, nose
to the grindstone mentality. Just doing what you’ve been told. When this
happens at a sustainable pace, with opportunity
to reflect, that can still work. But when panic sets in, when you start rushing
to meet deadlines (are they really deadlines,
btw?!?), there is a grave risk of working incredibly fast, but running in the wrong
direction!
So whenever I hear a request with an undertone of “don’t
think about this”, I remind myself: “That’s OK, I can choose not to think about it.” But as I have learned from some
hasty and expensive mistakes in the past, in the end it still is only me who is responsible for the risk
of that “heads-down-keep-trucking” mentality…
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