Bosses, listen up

ProDarwin said:

What blows me away is the people who will message "do you have time to chat?".  Umm, you are a chatting when you message me.  If I respond, that means I've got time.  If I don't respond, then I don't have time.  Same with calling, you don't have to say "can I call you?".  Call.  If I don't answer its because I'm busy.

Oh, I had blocked those from my memory somehow.  Yeah, that makes me insane, too.  I usually just go Dad-mode and say "I don't know..  can you?"

Different tools for different tasks.

Our sales guy has a habit of using phone first even to ask questions that would be better as a text. He does this a lot when I'm in the middle of watching a process. If it's a simple question and not urgent, text is easier.

ProDarwin said:
What blows me away is the people who will message "do you have time to chat?".  Umm, you are a chatting when you message me.  If I respond, that means I've got time.  If I don't respond, then I don't have time.  Same with calling, you don't have to say "can I call you?".  Call.  If I don't answer its because I'm busy.

Building off of this is people who refuse to accept or participate in norms that they were involved in establishing in the beginning. We worked hard to establish guidelines for how to use all the many channels we have and it would all be great if mister boss man would just follow them like literally everyone else in the department.

We established these basic norms off the top of my head because I use them daily:  

• One or two questions: Teams chat
• Informational or request of multiple people, relevant to a specific project or department? Teams channel post. 
• Informational or request of multiple people that isn't specific to a project or department? Teams group chat
• Internal meetings (<15 people): Teams
• External or any meeting >15 people: Zoom
• Tasks, multiple/complex requests, actionable items: email
• Urgent: phone call, email, Teams chat generally in that order. 
• All staff notifications, announcements, comms: email and corporate channel post. 

I think most of our complaints in this thread would be resolved by team/department/group norms. If the boss hates IMs, then the team should establish some norms that don't include IMs or at least identifies appropriate uses for them. 

My mechanical engineer learned Autocad while in his 60s. He's my hero. Sadly, I'm 60 YO and the youngest person in my office. We'd be SOL if we didn't have a good outside IT guy keeping us out of trouble. When he's not available, I'm the IT guy, which is pretty scary.

Mezzanine said:

ProDarwin said:
What blows me away is the people who will message "do you have time to chat?".  Umm, you are a chatting when you message me.  If I respond, that means I've got time.  If I don't respond, then I don't have time.  Same with calling, you don't have to say "can I call you?".  Call.  If I don't answer its because I'm busy.

Building off of this is people who refuse to accept or participate in norms that they were involved in establishing in the beginning. We worked hard to establish guidelines for how to use all the many channels we have and it would all be great if mister boss man would just follow them like literally everyone else in the department.

We established these basic norms off the top of my head because I use them daily:  

• One or two questions: Teams chat
• Informational or request of multiple people, relevant to a specific project or department? Teams channel post. 
• Informational or request of multiple people that isn't specific to a project or department? Teams group chat
• Internal meetings (<15 people): Teams
• External or any meeting >15 people: Zoom
• Tasks, multiple/complex requests, actionable items: email
• Urgent: phone call, email, Teams chat generally in that order. 
• All staff notifications, announcements, comms: email and corporate channel post. 

I think most of our complaints in this thread would be resolved by team/department/group norms. If the boss hates IMs, then the team should establish some norms that don't include IMs or at least identifies appropriate uses for them. 

 

 

Amazing..... y'all actually communicate amongst yourselves???? What a concept......how productive is this office?

I tend to group communications in order of importance. 

Phone call. Pretty important. One or two questions. Usually between a customer and a business. A long string of texts or chats can usually be managed in a 10 second phone call. 

Email. Important. Not time critical, ie hours. Lots of information. 

Teams meetings. Almost never important to me or what I do. Used to rehash information that everyone already has access to. Frequently provided in the email that proceeds the meeting. Marginally better than a conference call if there are more than 3 people. Still probably could have been an email.

Text and chats. Used to plan dinner if you see the message. Shoot someone an address or phone number when they dont have a pen. Often ignored for hours or days when more important things are happening. Save your fingers and call me. 

In reply to Toyman! :

That's my communications hierarchy as well.

Will said:

And stop complaining about millennials/Gen Z not knowing stuff if you can't mark up a PDF.

I've worked with PMs and engineers that print PDFs, mark them up and scan them to send back.

j_tso said:

In reply to Toyman! :

That's my communications hierarchy as well.

Will said:

And stop complaining about millennials/Gen Z not knowing stuff if you can't mark up a PDF.

I've worked with PMs and engineers that print PDFs, mark them up and scan them to send back.

my entire organization is communication by discovery or my I say OBTW ,I've been doing this for over 40 years and this is absolute CRAP!!!

j_tso said:

In reply to Toyman! :

That's my communications hierarchy as well.

Will said:

And stop complaining about millennials/Gen Z not knowing stuff if you can't mark up a PDF.

I've worked with PMs and engineers that print PDFs, mark them up and scan them to send back.

I'm not sure why this is a problem. It still communicates the pertinent info, right?

In reply to Toyman! :

Excellent! This sums up things pretty nicely. I'm not the boss where I work, but I will not attend stupid meetings or teleconferences that I know will be a waste of time. I hate how the deadest of dead weight have found refuge in setting up teams meetings and webexes to generate noise and smoke so they can look productive.

j_tso said:

In reply to Toyman! :

That's my communications hierarchy as well.

Will said:

And stop complaining about millennials/Gen Z not knowing stuff if you can't mark up a PDF.

I've worked with PMs and engineers that print PDFs, mark them up and scan them to send back.

This is what I did when all I had was a pdf viewer. A red felt pen is much cheaper than a seldom used software package. 

In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :

Yep the same old people with no new ideas run everything.  I'd say I told you so, but no one listens anyway.  I'm sure complaining about it will solve it.

In case you haven't figured it out Gen X doesn't feel sorry for the generations before or after us.  I will gladly make fun of all of them.  The most entertaining day I ever had at work was generational training.  Watching boomers and millennials and Gen Z go at each other was hilarious.  I find myself in the odd position of having to translate boomer into thoughts younger generations can grasp.  Generational communication sucks all around.  As for the boomers my dad is approaching 80 and still working. I tell him to retire and he doesn't listen.  They will not listen.  Fire them,  it's the only way.  Seriously fire them.  I have no desire to be in charge of younger generations either.  I'm seriously out the door between 58-62, and IDGAF.  I don't care if younger generations have electricity, water, food, or productive TEAMS meetings.  I can take care of my own needs if necessary.  
 

I'm willing to help anyone younger go as far and earn as much as they want.  If you learn my mistakes your future is unlimited.  If you want me to be in charge, not a chance.  I'm cranky, getting older, and I hate each generation equally and for different reasons.  I hate Gen Xers for not firing their parents too. Now the younger generations need to do it.

I can do everything you asked your boss to do better than your boss can.  But, and it's a big but, I've learned they don't listen to anyone.  I'm tired of being a generational bridge in a dysfunctional society.  Good luck!

I actually applied for a promotion at work today.  If they ever want me to do more and help others, this is their shot.  The boomers and a few Gen Xers can decide.  I honestly have plans either way.  Enjoy the silly work environment tye boomers created and we are leaving for you!  I know millennials and Gen Z have great ideas!  You just need to take control and make them happen!  If you want to know what not to do, I can steer you clear of the traps.  Gen X learned it all the hard way.  
 

You want control of your business, the boomers gotta go.  And don't even get started on other topics, you are seeing the tiny tip of the iceberg and not the full picture.  
 

Goid luck, you're gonna need it.

SV reX said:

j_tso said:

I've worked with PMs and engineers that print PDFs, mark them up and scan them to send back.

I'm not sure why this is a problem. It still communicates the pertinent info, right?

It turns a document into a stack of pictures and in the process gets rid of the CAD vector graphics, searchable text, bookmarks, etc.

Using the markup tools lets others see which pages are marked so they won't be missed and precludes the issues of handwriting legibility. Also you can copy+paste whatever into it. If the primary method of submission is PDF, the basic $13/month would save the sender's time as well as the recipient. Of course, this depends on the size of documents regularly used.

In reply to j_tso :

I have far worse problems with the stuff I receive regularly from PMs and engineers.  I'm not concerned with document format when the basic engineering is wrong. 

In reply to SV reX :

Given the context of the thread, that's like saying "who cares if I email, text, use chat, or schedule a meeting as long as the question/answer is conveyed?"

I work for a high value small company with multiple facilities in three countries. The corporate office is in an old low key industrial building. The majority of our management, sales and office staff are tech forward. I keep buildings running . I fix machines, create temporary and permanent resolutions to production inconveniences in four buildings. I have Outlook, GMail and Messenger on my phone. Don't call me and don't ask me to swing by for a chat. If you need a verbal moment call me. If you have sent an email I have seen it. If there has been zero comms it's likely because it's being digested, I'm a 3 man operation limited to 40 hours I may be moving a machine,  unclogging a toilet or wiring a facility addition. 

Do not send me a Team's invite.

There is a fallacy that software will replace the need for people skills in business. I retired not only because I could, but also partly due to the pandemic bringing on a secondary epidemic of productivity management tools. Seems like there was a new tool every week that was being introduced to deal with the distance-managed team; i just could not be bothered to buy in. Odd that I ended up in electrical engineering because software has always bored me to death.

Being in the product development game, one of my mantras was always "Don't care about the features, show me the benefits." It is not intuitive, but the two are not the same and can't always be converted. If you have to drown in 1000 features before you find a benefit, then it is a counterproductive tool.

At the end of the day, a lot of the young hot-shot gammer employees could make the new software sing and loved to show off the features ( young engineers tend to be easter egg hunters)  to prove they were team players and quick to learn. But the bottom line is there was a negative effect on actual productivity in the form of getting projects out the door.

Noise and communication are not the same thing. As a manager it is your job to implement a communication system that controls the signal to noise ratio in your department/company. No piece of software will do this for you because software has no people skills. Good luck.

Regarding the "do you have a minute" requests, in my case it's because I have Teams on my phone, so I may see the message, but might in the field and not able to respond in depth.  So I will give a quick response on when I'll be back to my desk. 

That said, a corporate desire for on-site, in person communication is why the client is spending a lot of money for me to be 350 miles from home for weeks on end (off/on since Oct).

So... I deal with this on a number of levels.  For the most part, we have embraced remote work culture. Projects get done. Most employees are happier not commuting in Philly suburb traffic.

Reading this makes me so happy I retired.  Last job broke my will.  No PCs, just toy boxes on a network with 2G RAM, so you couldn't have 2 windows open at once or it would crash.  MRP was written in COBOL in the 50s.  Purchase order changes ( I was a buyer) were not possible.  Had to write a new PO with negative quantities for every item and process both, then write a new PO with the desired changes.  Real fun on a 6 page order when a vendor short shipped!

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

I loved this post. It so fits in with my signature line. 

The so called "Peter principle" is very much a real thing, and it now arrives at a faster/younger age. Combined with a generation that does not, or can not retire, this is problematic.

Pete

Reminds me of when my father took a shot at a small business consulting and (in 2005-2006) one of his "clients" refused to use Excel for any of their accountancy work. They'd refuse to even use a scanner for things like receipts, an honest-to-god "the internet is just a fad" type. Showed me that most small businesses fail mostly due to incompetence than anything else.  

NOHOME said:

Being in the product development game, one of my mantras was always "Don't care about the features, show me the benefits." It is not intuitive, but the two are not the same and can't always be converted. If you have to drown in 1000 features before you find a benefit, then it is a counterproductive tool.

This. My hospital is switching over to EPIC for patient charting and frankly, the less time spent charting from paper isn't as big as we think because EPIC has so many requirements for proper rate/time/dose ect. for the medications given. What EPIC DOES allow me to do, is automatically produce graphs over long spans of patient care for trending, no longer physically needing the chart to chart, no longer need someone with a cryptography degree to Devine what my doctor wrote,  allowing multiple people to chart at once and allowing all of them to make notes on literally anything... 

GIRTHQUAKE wrote:

<snip>
My hospital is switching over to EPIC for patient charting 

</snip>

Since I have to use epic on the daily, what are you switching from?

I know any "decent" EMR, ie not meditech, is not cheap, like they all cost millions every year to keep and maintain besides the millions upfront....  This is why people refuse to change from the status quo, cost vs return.

Ranger50 said:

GIRTHQUAKE wrote:

<snip>
My hospital is switching over to EPIC for patient charting 

</snip>

Since I have to use epic on the daily, what are you switching from?

Paper. berkeleying paper. In 2023.

I think the only reason they got away with it for so long- since literally every other facility under the corporate umbrella also uses EPIC and we were THE outlier- was that we don't readily fit into the Federal Government's definition for facilities that had to go electronic due to the ACA/Medicare/Medicaid so we've gotten past it on a technicality.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

That's an administration failure.

Hey...wait a minute, this is just a minor rant thread for desk jockeys.