The Number One Rule of Being a Good Employee
I have come across this blog article through one of my friend. Really a good one! Thanks to BUU NGUYEN
The Article:
When we are assigned with a task, we are usually expected to:
1. Provide an estimation of how long it will take to finish the task
2. Go ahead and start working on it
3. Report problems and issues preventing the work from being done
4. Finish the task and report the result
Generally, the boss only cares about the estimation, the progress, the problems, and the result - in most cases (e.g. except from the period in which we are coached on a new work or position) he does not care how we are going to do that nor does he wants to be a problem checker of the result. Unfortunately, some people that I know really have problem with this when they assume that their bosses need to pay close attention to how they are doing their work and scrutinize their outputs to make sure nothing is done incorrectly and tell them whether there are things which should be adjusted. The boss is not supposed to do that.
I remember one time when an analyst sent me a technical spreadsheet which was supposed to be sent to the client. After a quick look at a few numbers in the summary tab to make sure that they did not look ridiculous (outside acceptable ranges), I forwarded the document to the client. A few days later, I received a many complaints from the client about the quality of that document which presented many inaccurate information and the fact that they expected a much better work than that. But that was not the worst thing of the day, what the analyst later told me really knocked me on the face “I thought you would review it and tell me if it had problems, and I thought you would not send them the document if it was not good enough”.
What he actually said was that he expected me to scrutinize the details of his document in order to tell him any single problem with it. That should never be the expectation and it was my fault for not making this point clear up-front with the team members. I told him that although I, as his manager, was supposed to assist him in resolving any problem he had when doing his work, he needed to tell me about the problems first because I was not supposed to figure out the problems for him, that he must be solely responsible for the quality of his work product and if he sent me the result without telling me about any of its problems, my assumption would be that the document came up with all the expectations he were communicated with when being assigned with the task, and if it was not, he was not doing his job well.
So, what is the first rule of being a good employee? Be autonomous, i.e. independent, self-directed and self-managed. Except from the period in which one is coached to learn about the new job or position, he is expected to be autonomous at all time. He is expected to do whatever he has to do in order to accomplish a task well, including seeking for help, escalating issues, and not relying on others to help him examine his work and telling him what goes wrong with it. Autonomous employees do not waste their bosses’ time, yet never silently produce a pile of crap. And bosses like autonomous employees.
