commentary

What Advice Would You Give? (Part 2)

After reading Tim Walker's though-provoking What "Real Advice" Would You Give Your Company?, I clicked over to a related question posted in October of this year.

My work often brings me into contact with college students — undergrads and grads — who are 10+ years younger than I am. Sometimes they, in all their wide-eyed naivete, ask me for career advice. Usually, in all my megalomania self-assurance, I give them some.

(What Advice Would You Give?)

Tim provides some excellent advice, interspersed with delightful images of cautionary signs. I encourage you to read the full post, then think about what advice you would give.

Here's mine:

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What Advice Would You Give

Tim Walker (Hoover's Business Insight Zone) asks What "Real Advice" Would You Give Your Company?

Quick fix = easy.

Tips-’n'-tricks = easy.

Actually doing things better = hard.
...
Even the best of us can fall for this illusion some of the time. In the business world, managers of high quality don’t believe in money for nothing. But even they can fall into the chasm between knowing that a problem exists and acting on that problem.
...
It’s going to take more than tips-’n'-tricks to get them where they need to be. It requires real advice, which is hard to give and hard to hear.

YOUR Advice

So, that brings us to you.

• If you could offer it without fear of recriminations . . .
• If you knew that it would be heeded and acted upon at the highest levels . . .
• If you knew that your organization was willing to go through the hard slog of making itself better . . .

. . . what REAL advice would you give?

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Feedback

Recently, Tim Walker posted a weblog essay on how to give unsolicited feedback.

It’s easier when you’re the boss, because you have a presumptive right to give feedback at any time to those below you. You should be home free if you show a little savvy by (a) pairing the criticism with a dose of praise, (b) offering it in private, and (c) making the criticism about a task or a skill instead of about the person. (E.g. “I really like what you’re doing with this project . . . but I think this presentation might have been clearer if . . .”)

-- How do you give unsolicited feedback?, August 22nd, 2008, www.hooversbiz.com

As he often does, Tim asked for comments (feedback) on the essay:

But what about other situations? What about all the other people you interact with in the course of your work? How can you use your insights, skills, base of knowledge, and so on to offer honest help to someone you know could use it?

I don’t have the answers to this one, despite having faced this situation any number of times in my career. So please share your own wisdom — I’m all ears.

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Readin', Ritin', and Rithmetic, by Rote

Yesterday in Twitter, @jemmons wrote

If answers to your test questions can be looked up by "cheaters" on their phones, maybe they don't need to learn them? BETTER QUESTIONS PLZ?

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Surprise

surprise - v.

1. to strike or occur to with a sudden feeling of wonder or astonishment, as through unexpectedness
2. to elicit or bring out suddenly and without warning: to surprise the facts from the witness.
3. to lead or bring unawares, as into doing something not intended

I'm thinking about "surprise" today and what it means. Yesterday, at the Job, I announced a decision that I believed was mine to make and that I also understood to be an expected, eventual outcome of discussions and plans we all had in mid-January. In other words, none of this should be surprising. The only unknown was the date of the decision.

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