Priorities

If you had to deal with 5 things or issues that require your urgent attention and they all happen at the same time, how do you know which one you should deal with first?

There’s no way you can deal with all of them at the same time with high level of focus. You either ask for other people’s help or half-ass the way you deal with all of them just to silence the nagging.

I’m swamped with stuff to do at work. It’s overwhelming. And it hurts my ego that I couldn’t address them all as fast as I wanted to.

My solution? Solve one problem at a time. It’s too challenging to make everyone happy.

Decision-making becomes difficult when all issues on the table are at the same level of importance.

This must be true for people at the higher levels of the organization. The higher the position is, the harder the decision that has to be made.

Though I’m not a manager or a supervisor of some sort (I’m at the low end of the “food chain”) I’m still responsible for managing the tasks I’m given.

When the cry for information happens (all at the same time), the competition for my attention is decided by how I perceive the people who wanted the information (from me).

If that someone is:

Being a douchebag about it – I’d probably tell them to fuck off.

Understanding of it – I’d probably prioritize them above everyone else.

Focused only on himself (for doing his job) but disregarding the need of the whole group or organization – then I’d probably ignore him.

My point? When dealing with issues at high-stakes, the decision made is often driven not by how important the issue is but by how the people ask or demand your help.

This also applies to…

“Customer-Supplier” Relationship

Some customers think they have the power to squeeze you to comply with their demands. They ran by the belief that “the customer is always right”. What customers don’t realize is that that phrase “the customer is always right” was meant for suppliers or service providers to allow them to serve their customers better. It wasn’t meant to be used by the customer to be given what they want because they have the money suppliers/service providers desperately need.

The truth is, suppliers would rather lose that one customer who feels privileged than to serve them by using more of their resources. Businesses don’t make money catering to their needs. It’s bad for business.

This made me change the way I approach stores, salespeople and service providers. They can tell me to fuck off if I’m being a bitchy customer.

Looping this back to work, it pisses me off when people are inconsiderate, unclear or when people force you to spit out an answer through their—

Emails

An e-mail was sent, an hour after the end of a regular day shift asking for information that needs be actioned ASAP.

It says “URGENT!!” and it was also CC’d to other groups in the organization.

The content says something along the lines of “We are still waiting for your feedback on this issue. Please address it right away otherwise we will miss the deadline”.

When I read that message, my gut reaction was to talk to this person face-to-face and ask him, “If this information was that urgent, then why didn’t you give me a call or come to me to demand some answers?”.

The message sent at end of business day. And worse, I know so little about the issue this person is talking about. Needless to say, this person is asking me for something I can’t give…right away. I needed to do some digging around and investigation to come up with an answer. Which is why it is critical to deal with urgent issues face-to-face to prompt that discussion and deal with the issue right on the spot.

Every relationship will be better of all parties have…

Empathy

I understand why he did what he did. The e-mail was a proof that he did what he was supposed to do which is to acquire information from me. And so when all shit breaks loose, he can say “Well, I sent that e-mail to RJ but he never responded. He’s aware but he didn’t respond to it which is what’s causing the delay”.

What a low-ball move! My evil-self wants to respond to his e-mail and copy my superiors and point out how to stupid this person’s approach was at acquiring information. This person took the lazy approach of sending a 15-second e-mail (at end of business day) instead of talking to me in person to discuss the issue right away.

Big organizations fail to work efficiently sometimes because some people care more about them being right instead of caring about benefiting the organization as a whole.

I, being an asshole about it will not make things better for the organization. It will just make it worse because instead of focusing on the problem, we are now focusing more on who fucked up – the blame game.

I can justify how right I was with my approach but I try hard not to. Because if I did, then I’m just like him – only cares about my ego.

Having said all that, I hope you focus more on doing the right thing to benefit everyone instead of being right (even though it hurts your ego ). See it as a sacrifice for the greater good.

It doesn’t matter who messed up. What matters is that the issue is solved right away by working as a team, not as individuals.

I was irritated walking out of the office. But decided not to let that ruin my weekend.

Thank goodness for…

Meditation

It allowed me to calm myself down and not take things too personally.

However, my sister thinks I’m a weirdo for meditating. And that is a fair assessment. I do things most people don’t normally do.

And I will continue to do them. Why? It works for me. I feel better physically and mentally.

Most people love to bitch about things. I was too for a long time. But there are times when I lose my shit and my asshole-self comes out and then I unconsciously say harsh things that could break relationships. I’m human just like everyone else. I can talk about meditation and peace and mindfulness, discipline and all that other stuff and then become a monster at the same time.

And when that happens, I get called a hypocrite. I contradict myself. Then people will point out all the contradictions in my logic.

And guess what? They are right. And then I lose my credibility to be taken seriously. I get it.

This goes back to people’s desire to be right.

I’ve always had trouble to communicate the logic behind what I talk about. But what I noticed was, when people needed the validation to be right, they lose their ability to listen to the other party. And when they listen, it’s not to get an understanding of what the other was communicating. They listen to find out more things they can pick on and point out how flawed your thoughts are.

But that’s also part of being human. We have egos. I have one too. But I need to get better at training myself to ignore it.

If you remember the last argument or intelligent discussion you had lately, were you really trying to understand what the other party is saying?

Or were you trying harder to tattoo in their minds how flawed their logic is?

Woosah!