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Getting more from your job

August 2008

by John Whitley

Office environments can be tricky places. We may find ourselves cheek by jowl with people we would prefer never to have met. We have bosses – tricky things bosses; unpredictable, irascible, forgetful, inconsiderate, aloof – and that’s on a good day. Just like the rest of us really, yet somehow we have to get on, communicate, deliver, hit deadlines and go home in the evening with our sanity and dignity intact. So here are 250 words of advice on surviving – even enjoying – the office experience.

I have four simple rules which I have evolved over time: keep the communication channels open; accept that all people, bosses included, are fallible; build on strengths and minimise weaknesses; believe that you can change things.

I once had to build a team in double quick time, recruiting from scratch with little opportunity to be picky. I needed good people; a really hot administrator; a salesman; a marketing specialist and a secretary. I couldn’t worry about personalities and questions of whether people would fit in. I had one question in mind – can they do the job. For the most part my judgement was right. I had picked competent and committed individuals. I had also created hell on Earth!

My administrator was wonderful. She missed nothing. Things ran like a dream. My salesperson was brilliant. He sold by the bucketful, hit the phones at eight am and never stopped. He thought of administrators as some form of pond-life. She thought salespeople were the spawn of the devil. Flesh flew. Communication was in short supply. There were some serious chips on shoulders and things were in danger of falling apart. It was a challenge.

We got the communication flowing – daily meetings, sometimes with a referee, covering key issues. Reports and structures began to emerge. Our protagonists never learned to respect each other – that was asking too much – but they learned to respect each other’s jobs, and that helped. They broke away from the “mental models” they had constructed of each other. Most importantly, they were charged with the responsibility of coming up with solutions that improved their working practices, and these solutions became the rules by which their lives became tolerable. It was never comfortable, but it began to work.

So remember the four rules. Be considerate of your fellow workers, communicate effectively and efficiently, work from strength and always believe you can change things for the better. You will be surprised what you can achieve.

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