Looking for the answer to the question of how to make people more responsible ...
Quite a frequent request from colleagues, managers who hear: how to increase the responsibility of a person?
It would seem that humanity for thousands of years of its existence should have come to some kind of algorithm for increasing responsibility. And here he is, your trainer's chance - set out this algorithm and change forever the life of a single manager!
However, in life it is becoming more and more difficult ... You have to deal with boring clarifications: and now how do people work? “Well ... irresponsible.”
')
Hmm, it does not become clearer. I would like to slyly clarify: “in the sense that women and children are abandoned?”, But in reality, you begin to understand.
It seems that everything should be simple. Information sponsor of all habstaty Wikipedia provides a fairly clear definition of responsibility :
However, I am afraid that I became the second person after the author of this Wikipedia article who read it - why do you need to read it, if it is also “intuitively clear” what responsibility means, many managers will tell me?
As a result, each definition has its own definition for each “intuitive thing” in the head of each manager. And for some reason, some managers believe that the people around them should telepathically takethis mess of their own definition and immediately begin to behave “as it should.”
Let us return, however, to the irresponsible behavior of employees. The most frequent interpretations of this term that have been encountered have meant:
1. The person does not report problems that should be reported. (Either it passes by, or tries to decide for itself what it is not necessary to decide for itself.)
2. The person promises to do something, but then he doesn’t have time and takes the deadline five times: “there’s just a little bit left, tomorrow should be ready”.
These are clearer inquiries and here you can just recommend something.
As we have already discussed , if a person does not do something, there may be one of 4 reasons for this:
In a discussion with a person, it would be good to go for these reasons and understand what is happening:
Fuzzy goal:
Does a person understand that there is no need to pass by problems? Or does he honestly believe that this is not part of his work?
Can not:
Does a person know how to solve which problems he should solve himself, which problems he shouldn’t pay attention to, and which problems he should escalate? Does a person have all the necessary knowledge to make the right choice?
As a matter of fact. Was there a moment at work when a person worked the way you want? If he was, then he can, then what has changed?
Can not:
How is it with the load? If the work of three people is hanged on it now, then it is rather naive to believe. that he will still take two hours off sleep to solve additional problems.
Does not want:
If the previous three reasons are closed, here we come to what he wants as a person at all and to select arguments for his conviction .
Without going into the techniques of project planning and evaluation of tasks, about which we have already said , we will draw another 2 by 2 matrix:
On one scale, we have postponed the criticality of tasks, on the other - clarity. (A separate question is how to measure the clarity of the problem, we will move it beyond the scope of this article.)
Intuitively, we usually choose the following order of tasks:
Given that the greatest uncertainty in the timing of the project bring the most incomprehensible tasks. It is from there that such things that we did not calculate at the planning stage can be reached.
That is, the general recommendation is to go counter-intuitively:
Starting with the most incomprehensible, but critical tasks. Starting with them at the beginning of the project, we still have a large time buffer to respond to changes.
The second most common moment is the wrong type of control. To control such tasks, we choose random (when we recall) or a preliminary type of control instead of periodic or phased. In a nutshell, not much delving into all types of control:
Preliminary control is when we check the completion of a task near the end of its term, leaving a time margin for correction. (The amount of temporary stock varies, but usually is not too large.)
At the same time, according to science, a preliminary type of control is applied for tasks that the contractor has already successfully done, and when the chances of success are great, but we still want to hedge.
In the case of incomprehensible tasks, we use:
(An attentive reader will notice that we discuss the type and frequency of control immediately. This is done because we may not control all other tasks of the architect at all - he does them perfectly. And a person could get used to the complete trust that is expressed in him lack of control. And then the task is new, we will start running to it every two days, and the second time he will hate us.)
To summarize, a problem with a lack of responsibility of engineers always requires specification. (Your KO) And as soon as they are specified, the decision itself comes next.
PS If you had any problems of your own with the responsibility of people and you overcame or not overcome them (problems) - we will be glad to read your experience in the comments.
PPS In general, on the term “responsibility” there is an excellent presentation of our colleague Sergey Dmitriev, where he examines the concept of the five islands of responsibility avoidance:
It would seem that humanity for thousands of years of its existence should have come to some kind of algorithm for increasing responsibility. And here he is, your trainer's chance - set out this algorithm and change forever the life of a single manager!
However, in life it is becoming more and more difficult ... You have to deal with boring clarifications: and now how do people work? “Well ... irresponsible.”
')
Hmm, it does not become clearer. I would like to slyly clarify: “in the sense that women and children are abandoned?”, But in reality, you begin to understand.
It seems that everything should be simple. Information sponsor of all habstaty Wikipedia provides a fairly clear definition of responsibility :
Responsibility is a personal characteristic of a person, describing his ability to analyze the situation in detail, predict in advance the consequences (the whole complex of consequences) of his actions or inactions in a given situation and choose the form of his actions with readiness to accept the consequences of choice as inevitable facts.
However, I am afraid that I became the second person after the author of this Wikipedia article who read it - why do you need to read it, if it is also “intuitively clear” what responsibility means, many managers will tell me?
As a result, each definition has its own definition for each “intuitive thing” in the head of each manager. And for some reason, some managers believe that the people around them should telepathically take
Let us return, however, to the irresponsible behavior of employees. The most frequent interpretations of this term that have been encountered have meant:
1. The person does not report problems that should be reported. (Either it passes by, or tries to decide for itself what it is not necessary to decide for itself.)
2. The person promises to do something, but then he doesn’t have time and takes the deadline five times: “there’s just a little bit left, tomorrow should be ready”.
These are clearer inquiries and here you can just recommend something.
Situation number 1. The person does not report problems that should be reported. (Either it passes by, or tries to decide for itself what it is not necessary to decide for itself.)
As we have already discussed , if a person does not do something, there may be one of 4 reasons for this:
- Fuzzy goal (does not understand why)
- Can not
- Can not
- Does not want
In a discussion with a person, it would be good to go for these reasons and understand what is happening:
Fuzzy goal:
Does a person understand that there is no need to pass by problems? Or does he honestly believe that this is not part of his work?
Can not:
Does a person know how to solve which problems he should solve himself, which problems he shouldn’t pay attention to, and which problems he should escalate? Does a person have all the necessary knowledge to make the right choice?
As a matter of fact. Was there a moment at work when a person worked the way you want? If he was, then he can, then what has changed?
Can not:
How is it with the load? If the work of three people is hanged on it now, then it is rather naive to believe. that he will still take two hours off sleep to solve additional problems.
Does not want:
If the previous three reasons are closed, here we come to what he wants as a person at all and to select arguments for his conviction .
Situation number 2. A person promises to do something, but then he doesn’t have time and takes the deadline five times: “there’s just a little bit left, tomorrow should be ready”.
Without going into the techniques of project planning and evaluation of tasks, about which we have already said , we will draw another 2 by 2 matrix:
On one scale, we have postponed the criticality of tasks, on the other - clarity. (A separate question is how to measure the clarity of the problem, we will move it beyond the scope of this article.)
Intuitively, we usually choose the following order of tasks:
Given that the greatest uncertainty in the timing of the project bring the most incomprehensible tasks. It is from there that such things that we did not calculate at the planning stage can be reached.
That is, the general recommendation is to go counter-intuitively:
Starting with the most incomprehensible, but critical tasks. Starting with them at the beginning of the project, we still have a large time buffer to respond to changes.
An example is not from IT. Some time ago, SlavaPankratov and I launched in parallel 20 online training programs in various areas. This happened 3 times a year. A team of 20 experts worked. Our task, among other things, was to collect information from them and create 20 announcements.
The first time we started with the announcements of our five programs, leaving the most incomprehensible last. As a result - sleepless nights before release. And the most annoying thing is that on the last night you won’t wake up the expert with your silly clarifications.
Not the first time, but we came to the conclusion that we began to start with the most incomprehensible announcements. This is absolutely unpleasant, because it is contrary to our nature (you first need to eat a tasty cake, and then a tasteless liver cutlet — can I don’t eat it at all?) But in that case we had several days to ask all the questions to our experts. And lo and behold, by the last night before the release everything was ready for a long time.
The second most common moment is the wrong type of control. To control such tasks, we choose random (when we recall) or a preliminary type of control instead of periodic or phased. In a nutshell, not much delving into all types of control:
Preliminary control is when we check the completion of a task near the end of its term, leaving a time margin for correction. (The amount of temporary stock varies, but usually is not too large.)
At the same time, according to science, a preliminary type of control is applied for tasks that the contractor has already successfully done, and when the chances of success are great, but we still want to hedge.
In the case of incomprehensible tasks, we use:
- Periodic type of control (control at regular intervals). A typical example: scrum meetings or daily meetings. Or:
- Phased type of control , when the work is divided into semantic stages. And we check what happened at each of the semantic stages. Example: 1st stage: prototype, 2nd: implementation of basic functionality, etc.
Example. For example, after 2 weeks a technical director arrives for you, for which you need to make a presentation of the architecture of your project. You assign this task to the architect of your project. As usual, he says: “So what is there to do there?” No question! ”And leaves.
The preliminary type of control is you, after a couple of days before the arrival of the technical director, decide to look at the presentation. And just you will have a couple of days to redo everything yourself.
But if you have ever seen how technical people can draw presentations (and most importantly, you have not seen your architect draw presentations), you will choose a different type of control:
Periodic: “Look, the task is critical, according to it we will be evaluated. And we have not done such tasks before. So let's meet every couple of days, see what happens there? ”
or
Phased: “Look, the task is critical, according to it we will be evaluated. And we have not done such tasks before. Let's beat her into stages, for example, the structure of the presentation, then diagrams, pictures, then the slides themselves? ”
(An attentive reader will notice that we discuss the type and frequency of control immediately. This is done because we may not control all other tasks of the architect at all - he does them perfectly. And a person could get used to the complete trust that is expressed in him lack of control. And then the task is new, we will start running to it every two days, and the second time he will hate us.)
To summarize, a problem with a lack of responsibility of engineers always requires specification. (Your KO) And as soon as they are specified, the decision itself comes next.
PS If you had any problems of your own with the responsibility of people and you overcame or not overcome them (problems) - we will be glad to read your experience in the comments.
PPS In general, on the term “responsibility” there is an excellent presentation of our colleague Sergey Dmitriev, where he examines the concept of the five islands of responsibility avoidance:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/243671/
All Articles