Code Brown— How immediate action is not always the best response
Warning: This contains a story about dog excrement, but I promise it is relevant (and essential) to the point I want to make. Honest.
I’ve heard it said before that people are inherently lazy. I’m not sure that I completely agree with that as a mass generalisation. It’s certainly something I have felt about myself though and sometimes my lack of immediate action has paid off in unexpected ways…
Like many people, in the last year I thought about getting a dog. I was working from home permanently and although I had a dog as a child (after what seemed like years of begging my parents), I’ve always wanted to have a dog as an adult. Not being one to act on a whim, especially not with a big decision like this, I took a careful, analytical approach. We sat down as a family. We weighed the pros and cons (there may have been a spreadsheet involved with weighted criteria). We concluded that the cons far outweighed the pros. But you know, just to make our lives more complicated than they need to be, we went and did it anyway...
Non-dog owners may not be aware of this, but dogs are not terribly good at sitting on a toilet and tend to want to do their business outside (if you’re lucky). We have a back garden (flex!) and our dog likes to go out there first thing in the morning and get things moving nice and early. During the winter months, I must admit, I wasn’t too keen to follow him outside and clean up after him. It’s not the most fun job at the best of times, but when it’s really cold (by UK standards this means hovering around 0°C) it can be even less appealing. After a few consecutive days of particularly grim weather, this lack of enthusiasm for housekeeping led to a slight backlog (pun intended) of business to deal with. I knew I should get out there and pick it up. The presence of these presents was starting to become quite unsightly. The risk of inadvertently stepping in one was ever increasing. What would the neighbours think?!
When I finally followed the course of action the circumstances demanded - wrapped up in a parka, woolly hat but no gloves (gloves and poo bags are not compatible in my experience) I had a rather pleasant surprise…
What is usually an awkward, occasionally sloppy job was very easy. The external conditions were such that a collection of Poo-cicles had formed (Ok… maybe ’pleasant’ was not the right word to describe this surprise). A task I had been dreading was completed quickly, with little effort. And all because I hadn’t acted immediately.
[I will pause at this point to be completely clear that since becoming a dog owner we have picked up 100% of all mess caused by our pet. It’s a point of (strange) pride, so please don’t confuse my garden habits with those out in public!]
This got me thinking about times at work when I have similarly delayed action with similarly positive results. An issue has occurred on a project. I’ve recognised it as an issue (yay, me!), I’ve decided on what I think is the best action to take, often times more out of instinct than deep thought and then…nothing. I’ve done nothing. Well, not nothing but I’ve not immediately jumped to complete the action. I’ve sat back, waited, monitored and then I’ve waited some more, maybe because I got distracted by something else, maybe it just felt like the right thing to do.
I’m not talking about waiting for days or weeks but at least minutes and sometimes hours. On multiple occasions that I can think of, the action I had planned to take soon became redundant. Either someone on the team had already started to address the issue, or what appeared to be an issue on first glance soon became a non-issue as more information became available. On those occasions, had I acted immediately it would have been counter-productive. I could have created confusion with my team or client, or at the very least wasted my own time and effort…time and effort which could have been spent elsewhere, making a positive difference, or at the very least a cup of coffee.
As a project manager, or manager of any kind, it can be tempting to want to take control and feel like you are making a difference. You want to feel needed, wanted, you want to feel like you’ve really earned that PM fee listed in the contract. And what better way to make a difference than being super responsive, living in your email inbox and firing out countless emails, IMs and phone calls as soon as you get wind of the slightest problem? Right?
No. Just, no.
Reacting when you don’t have all the information can cause additional churn for your team and that kind of frantic activity can be stressful for all involved and isn’t sustainable long term. Stepping in like this is akin to seeing a wisp of smoke and running around the building screaming “FIRE!”, filling buckets with water and setting off the fire alarm before finding out that the smoke was in fact just from the candles on Jill in accounting’s birthday cake. Sure, nobody usually bothers with birthday cakes, so how were you to know? But this is Jill from accounting, everyone loves Jill from accounting (at this point I did stop to question why I wasn’t invited to fictional Jill’s fictional birthday celebrations).
Now, I’m not saying that immediate action is always wrong. There’s a time and place of course. Sometimes there really is a fire and you are the one standing next to the extinguisher and the fire alarm. But it’s best to make sure it’s a real fire first and if so, determine what type of fire. You don’t want to go throwing water on an electrical toaster fire. I’ve heard that’s bad, can do more harm than good, not to mention it results in some soggy toast (I bet it was Jill from accounting setting the toaster too high again…bloody Jill.)
[That was quite a large section about ‘fires’, just a reminder that this was an analogy or a metaphor(?) for issues on a project. If you are a real life fire fighter and reading this (hello, you may be lost but glad to have you here) reacting quickly to fires is definitely something you should do.]
Sometimes, intentional and thoughtful inactivity gives your team the space and opportunity to solve an issue. This could provide them with a development opportunity or just get that warm, self satisfied feeling of accomplishment that comes with solving a problem independently. And after all, team development is part of the role of a project manager or manager, so doing nothing is actually doing your job (try writing that on your next performance appraisal!)
So next time there’s (metaphorical) smoke, or you spot a steaming pile that needs attention, take a breath. Understand the issue as well as you can and make a plan. But maybe don’t act on it straight away. After all, conditions could change and instead of dealing with a messy situation, you could be left with a much easier clean up job than you anticipated.
That’s all I’ve got.
