I’m constantly struck with the simplicity of what really works. One of the keys of improvising a scene is to “be obvious”: if you have a father and a son and the son says “Dad, can i borrow the car” then the answer from the dad shouldn’t be “After you’ve cleaned up the space junk on Zoltran”, but rather something along the lines of “After you’ve cleaned up your room”.
It turns out it works in helping managers deal with managing too. This article by Adam Grant talks about the importance of highlighting what you think is obvious in management as well: for example, a manager should always meet a new hire on their first day. (When they do there are some surprising gains in retention, internal networks and other things… read it!).
What’s obvious?
So here are some other obvious things I would like to point out.
- If you want to understand what a client wants, ask good questions
- If you want to be happy, do what makes you happy
- If you are overloaded at work the answer is not to work harder, but start saying no (nicely) to the things which don’t align strategically with your vision (or the organisation’s vision)
- If you don’t like your job, find another one
- If you don’t like your boss, find another one (or release their resume to a head hunter…)
- If you don’t know something, find it out, learn about it
- If you’re meeting someone for the first time, match and mirror them, find out what you have in common, make an effort to be on the same page BEFORE you ask them to do anything
- When you’re presenting pay attention to the audience’s responses
- When you’re presenting, be prepared
- If you feel life has no meaning, try something new
This is fun!
