Slashdot Mirror
On Employees Educating Employers?
ramannoodle asks: "My employer currently makes many decisions that I feel would save them a lot of money by going about it in a different way. I have presented many of these ideas to them, but being the not-so-great sales person that I am, I feel in some ways that by voicing my opinion on these things, I am jeopardizing my standing with the company. Is it the right thing to do to continue educating my employer on issues they do not want to hear, but will save them money and just risk being one of the many unemployed honest IT professionals out there? Do I hide what I know from them by keeping my mouth shut and just doing what they tell me so I can keep my job and feed my family? It's a tough economy out there, and is it worth being over-enthusiastic about helping the company?" We touched on this issue for contractors, but what about actual employees?
Don't sweat it.
Just kick back, take the paycheck, and do what is asked of you. Do it well if you want satisfaction of a job well done, do it just well enough to avoid being fired if work is just someplace you go between 8am and 5pm.
Really, unless your job description specifically allows you to suggest and make improvements to processes (and the company culture is *clearly* open to such things), don't try to get into the inner circle - you'll only target yourself for the next round of cuts as 'that guy who's always being negative'. In my case, by suggesting other ways to do things, I was seen as 'negative', even though I didn't say 'don't do that!', merely 'you know, this way may be better...'.
Attain a state of Zen - You are an employee. They pay you to show up and do what you're told for eight hours a day. In exchange, they give you money. Nothing more. To try to attribute higher meaning or greater value to your job where none exists is just adding to your stress levels.
Why yes, I am bitter. But now I have experience, and I have attained Zen.
If this is the case, don't be so sure of yourself. If you're not the head of the IT department, I would either:
If you are the head of IT, then you should already have the ear of the highers-up, if it's not entirely your decision to make.
I suppose the simple answer is: Don't neglect the chain of command. If you're perceived as an uppity, out-of-line employee, it's going to overshadow your message.
You might want to see about building a network of support with others in your organization.
If you feel that your selling skills won't win over the decision makers, find someone else in the organization that shares your feelings, and have them help sell the company on your ideas.
A lot of times it is difficult to go at it alone, but with a network of support, you'll have people backing you up and raising the level of awareness.
Discuss your ideas with a smaller group, a make a game plan for bringing it up to management. Look for advocates, and someone to champion your cause.
If you can save money, or avoid problems the company should appreciate the efforts. Sometimes you just have to work through old-thinking.
If feeding your family is what's most important to you, then you've made your decision already.
In my opinion, if you briefly offer them the pros and cons of both your idea of doing things versus the way they want to, and they choose to ignore it, you've done your part. You don't have to force the issue and become one of the many honest but unemployed. You've given them alternatives, but haven't forced them down their throats. A brief mention is all that's really necessary.
The sad fact is, the way companies go about business decisions has lots more to do with upper management making "good ol' boy" deals that benefit important individuals (both within and outside the company) than technical merit, or doing things the best way for the company. Then there are the decision makers with huge, fragile egos that view any dissenting voice as a direct attack on them and some kind of ploy for power within the company(simply because they cannot conceive of any other reason anyone might disagree with them).
I was involved with a large-scale Oracle deployment at my last employer. I kid you not when I say trained monkeys could have made better business and technical decisions regarding this deployment. I protested in varying degrees of urgency, getting more vocal as time went on (and my hours per week increased). I very very nearly lost my job over it, and I was NOT being a butthole about it. I nearly lost my job because I was RIGHT, and pointed out that I had correctly predicted many of the failings and problems that arose as a result of stupid decisions. Even though I was (at least I thought) polite and professional about it, I was taken aside by my non-technical IT superiors and told to shut the hell up or I'd be looking for another job.
I wound up looking for and getting another job anyway, but the moral of my story is, no good deed goes unpunished. You must realize, especially in huge corporations, that things like these have nothing to do with technical merits or doing things the right way. Its all about power ploys and political maneuverings(sp?).
Styrofoam IS biodegradable, you're just impatient!
It sounds like what you really need to do is educate yourself. Pick up some books on giving presentations and selling your ideas, or maybe take a class at the local CC (Speech or Drama). Also, educate yourself on what you are pushing and the alternatives as well. You need to be able to answer any challengers.
Keep at it though, eventually they might listen. Or maybe the guy who mainly opposes your ideas will "seek opportunities outside the company". You never know.
I don't see how you can hurt your position by suggesting ways for the company to save money as long as you aren't being obnoxious about it. Absolute worst case scenario: your new communication skills will really help you out in interviews.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
If you do have some opinions on where the company should go, share them with your immediate supervisor or manager. Be prepared to answer questions when they get asked. Have at your fingertips and on your tongue tip the answers to the questions he is going to ask you.
If your supervisor is worth anything, he will give you the message his supervisors would give you. If you are able to convince him, then you have a shot at getting it all the way up. Besides, your supervisor will be better at getting the message sold than you would.
You have to get educated. You have to learn how to sell it. You have to have the facts to back it up.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
This may be a surprise to a lot of IT workers, but most people aren't as smart as they think they are, and most bosses are smarter than their workers think the bosses are.
Instead of approaching the problem as "My idiot boss is doing something that I know is stupid", try approaching it as "I don't understand why my boss is doing this. I should learn."
It may turn out that your boss learns something from you. If so, you win because the boss now has a higher impression of you.
Or (more likely) you will learn more about the situation, and possibly understand why the boss made the decision s/he did. In which case, you still win, because learning is a good thing, and because your boss is impressed that you care enough to learn more than just the bare minimum of your job.
Finally, don't confuse subjective with objective. Many decisions are not clear-cut, and come down to subjective "better" or "more important" criteria. If your boss' opinion of the relative importance of two things differs from yours, then you two can make different decisions even with exactly the same facts. All you can do in this case is to try to understand why your boss ranks things that way (because, referring to the start of this post, chances are that the person with more experience and more success in the field has a better feeling for "more important" and "better").
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
I'm not unique in this, but have you looked at it from the other side? Perhaps it might help you, who is so much wiser than your supervisors (who, contrary to popular belief rarely get their job through the "Mel Cooley" route of being related to the boss) to look at things from management's point of view. (Side note: This is a point that seems to come up a lot in Ask /. -- it seems a lot of the IT people here are too busy being intelligent, patting themselves on the back for it, and showing their intelligence to actually THINK about what's going on!)
I own my own business. Before that, I worked for a few local small businesses. I've also worked as a teacher, with numerous students telling me they knew much more about what they had to know to do Algebra well than I did. The first time I was in charge of people was when I was a teenager, when I was directing and producing a 2 hour dramatic (and sci-fi based with special effects!) production to air on local cable TV. It seems easiest to make my point with an example from that experience. I knew the script forward and backward. If someone called out a scene number (w/ over 100 scenes in a 2 hour script), I could tell you what happened, what actors and props were needed, what set it was on, etc. - everything about it. I could also tell you what scenes came before and after, as well as what the last scene any actor, prop, or set was used and what the next one they were in would be. I had to know all this, since I had nobody to help with continuity. Many times actors would make suggestions they thought would make it better. At first I tried to explain ("No, we can't add a punchline for comic relief here, since we're building toward something more dramatic 2 scenes down," or "I know you look better in that costume, but in the last scene, you were angry and took off and you've been tramping around in the woods, with no luxeries for 2 weeks in July, so you can't wear the sweater that makes you look stacked!") to the actors why or why not something would work. I found that often they were too focused on their own performances (as they should be) to keep the overall view in mind. Often they would say a suggestion whould make their scene better or add personality to the character. After a while I had so much to do I couldn't always explain why I had to (or decided to) say no to many requests. Many times I nixed an idea because it would completely destroy a scene that was important to another character, only to hear an actor walk away, mumbling under their breath, something about just wanting a quality production. What they did not see, and often could not see without the exhaustive time I had put into studying the script before I had cast any of them, was the big picture. I wasn't against quality, but I couldn't have someone changing one scene when it disrupted the overall story.
I find that happening in offices all the time. In my company, the employees do not need to know why I make a decision. The point is it's my business, I'm in charge, and it's my job to keep the business running. I may go with a system that costs more today. Maybe I've got a good relationship with the vendor and know that in another month I'll be buying video equipment instead of computer equipment and they can get it for me for wholesale.
The point is that, as an employee, you don't know why management is making their decisions. It's not your job to know and it's not their job to tell you. When I hire a coder, his/her job is to write code -- and possibly to give advice (when asked for) on overall computer systems. Maybe what I'm doing doesn't make sense to them. It doesn't have to. It makes sense to me. Maybe I'm spending more now because it's a tradeoff and I'd rather spend a few thousand extra on a LAN and save three times that much next month on video equipment. Maybe I'm getting equipment from one dealer because I can barter with him and keep my net cost down. It's not my job to tell an IT person why I'm doing something. It's my sho
Exactly.
I've made the transition from code monkey to marketing monkey. I end up helping a lot of sales reps on calls because of my technical background and ability to "geek-meld" in one sentence and pitch "value propositions" in the next.
There are several key parts to the pitch:
o Give the other guy an out that makes him look good.
This means opening with "I might be missing something but," or "Would it contradict the big picture if we..." In each case you give the receiver of the idea a chance to explain what it is their doing and educate you.
o Read the crowd
A good DJ doesn't just play songs, he guides the crowd and builds energy. He spends a lot of time looking at facial expressions and watching how people dance -- what are they reacting to? What kicks the energy up a notch? What makes them roll their eyes, etc. You have to do the same with your audience. If they're being terse and not really responding, back off. They don't want to talk about your suggestion and pushing it is only going to irritate them. If you manage to make them stop and think about it, don't jump in too quickly. Let them ease into the idea. Don't forget to show the benefits to them in terms of how it'll make them look, etc.
o Be ready to drop it
This is crucial. Your idea may not fit in a bigger picture an established process, or you may be improving something that doesn't present a really good return. (e.g. optimizing the snot out of a loop that that takes 1 second to run, once an hour isn't nearly as useful as optimizing the loop that runs 1000 times a second) Of course, you may simply be simply be stepping on a toe and the person wants you to back off. Don't write off the possibility that the current idea is too far down the path to change (e.g. don't put someone in a tough spot because they just spent $500k on web caches when squid and some PCs would have sufficed -- the money is spent and you can only make people look bad)
o Don't repeat yourself and be ready to support the existing idea
If the idea was heard and rejected, don't keep going back in a huff. You'll only annoy and piss off everyone. Once you've done your pitch and it has been ignored/dropped/whatever, support the decision that was made. Your ideas will be better received in the future when your managers know that you'll still support the team.
Best of luck...