Reducing Friction | Career Angles
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Environments win. What can you do to reduce the interference?
I want to talk with you about friction and the importance of reducing friction. You know, one thing I noticed along the way in my career when I worked in search was that there were things in the organizations I work for, even at times the ones that I owned, that created friction that interfered with the ability to be successful. I’ll give you an example.
When I worked with the last firm I was associated with, there were people in the organization who would steal from others and we were expected to keep up our morale up and pretend nothing had happened. There were times when the owner got sued for discrimination. You think we’re all sitting around happy as we were being subpoenaed by lawyers? Now these are extreme examples but look at the day-to-day environment. What is your desk like? Lots of papers there? Is it noisy around you? I’m going to talk about it’s quiet like a monastery, but is there lots of noise around you that makes it hard for you to concentrate? Or is there no noise, a problem? You prefer to have some no matter what it is. All these things kind of interfere with success and I tend to think in terms of what eliminates friction.
Now when you’re a leader or management in an organization, you have control of these factors. Do people have the right tools to do their job. Do they need to keep repeating themselves when they’re on the phone with customers in order to be understood? What is getting in the way in the physical environment? Is the lighting poor, the soundproofing poor? What is it like? And for you as an employee, I tend to think of it as what exists within the environment that’s interfering with your success and can you get rid of it? Can you get rid of it? What makes it unpleasant for you and the encumbrances? Can you get rid of them so you can do what you need to? If the encumbrance is your boss, maybe you have a conversation with she or he in order to ensure that the conversation is open and if they say, “Sorry this is the way I am,’ you’ve got a choice to make.
And I know which one you should take.
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked in recruiting for what seems like one hundred years. He is the head coach for NoBSCoachingAdvice.com. He is the host of “The No BS Coaching Advice Podcast,” and “No BS Job Search Advice.”
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