Question: I’m completely overwhelmed with demands for my time, from everyone under the sun, and my manager is way too busy to help or even pay attention. I’m screwed.
Answer:
Yes, you are. But look on the bright side – if management is too busy to pay attention, you can work remotely and keep putting people off until they get distracted by demands on THEIR time.
Question: How do I know when a document is ready for release?
Answer:
When the stream of comments slows to a trickle and dries up. This indicates that the doc is as good as it’s going to get, and people are starting to forget about it and move onto the next thing.
Question:
I have to deliver something interim and everything’s still up in the air.
Answer: When things are in doubt, use vaguification.
Question: I have to get sign-off from Safety and Legal before releasing this document, but they aren’t responding to my phone calls and emails. I’m committed to a deadline I can’t meet!
Answer:
You must escalate to management immediately. Include the PM in charge of the project. Don’t try to solve it yourself. Take the long-term view: eventually, EVERYTHING is a self-correcting problem.
Question: How do I answer intrusive interview questions? They just make my skin crawl.
Answer:
Yeah, interviewers always ask “What gets you out of bed in the morning?” and no one wants to hear you say, “Percocet”.
Question:
How can anyone celebrate genius when no one has time to do any actual thinking? We have so many team meetings that I hardly have time to get my work done, much less think about it.
Answer:
Imagine a company with “genius” branding all over the place. Then, Albert Einstein himself comes in as a candidate for an interview. Maybe he fell through a time warp and still thinks it’s 1945.
Question: During my last performance review, my manager told me that no one reads my documentation, that it’s just an annoying check box for regulatory compliance. I know people do use it, because they ask me where to find it and sometimes they re-use the content. Am I wasting my time?
Answer:
Yes.
Question: What do I do if an urgent request comes out of nowhere and it’s something so major that it would literally take months?
Answer:
You must hypnotize the requestor into wanting what YOU want to give them, instead of the thing they’re asking for.
Question: Who should review my document? Also, how many people?
Answer:
Ideal working doc review team size is 3-5. Anything over 8 will slow you down. Anything less and you’ll miss important things. Continue reading
Question: What do I do when people come to me out of the blue with ad-hoc demands? Do I drop everything and do it? Who are these people and how can I tell what’s really important?
Answer:
There’s nothing worse than someone who drops out of the sky, insists that some huge task be completed RIGHT NOW or the world will stop turning, and then the person disappears before you can even ask them what’s going on. They act like they’re the only people in the room that matter and they don’t consider the needs or perspectives of other stakeholders. If you obey their commands, you’ll end up with a very short-lived document or a bunch of un-manageable branches. This way lies perdition. Continue reading
Art Before Science 