Last year, two of my employees were having words. One was hot-faced and teary (Red); the other was stone-faced and serious (Rock). I assumed they were in a fight again; one putting pressure on the other to perform to our high standards, which are not only about hitting targets.
Feeling bad for Red, I whisked her into my office and asked if she wanted to change departments, to work with someone she might get along with better and work better under. She said ‘yes, thank you’.
I then mentioned the matter to two of our top management staff who agreed with the desk change and proceeded to jump all over Rock for often being too stern and non-agreeable.
Later in the day I had the opportunity to talk to Rock. I told her I had a discussion with Red and thought maybe it best to move her to another department –to work under someone she would get along with better, as I noticed they argued occasionally with today resulting in tears.
Rock then told me the reason she was having words with Red was because a candidate informed her that Red pitched him a job that was not from a Staffwell client and asked him to not mention it to anyone at Staffwell.
Hmmm…I may have assumed wrong. Assume: Ass-u-me. ‘Assume wrong and it can make an ass out of you and me’. A very dangerous thing to do in business is assume anything. Get the facts first from all sides, take your time, and stay neutral throughout until your final decision making.
We then went into full investigation mode and talked to all parties involved, and made a decision on the matter based on facts, evidence and what we consider proper business conduct and ethics.
I assumed wrong.
Tags : assume, business conduct, decision, ethics, facts, предполагать, строить догадки, факты
Приветик. У меня возник вопрос. Я вот пишу иногда вам комментарии они появляются но потом когда через минуту захожу их уже нет. Почему так не понятно ?
Прикольно! По-настоящему занятно написано.
It’s an important point of doing business. In fact, entire methodologies in Project Management and (for example) software development have been created to take assumptions out of the picture. It would be an extreme approach to management to have all discussions documented in a structured way, to remove assumptions !
It does beg the question, though, how to deal with assumptions and get clarity of intent / purpose.
It would be interesting to hear of any techniques out there that may be useful.
Assumption is the mother of all mess-ups
I think this article is a kind of continuation of the previous lesson about “listening” but with having different bent. Listening to clarify helps you check that assumption and verify the meaning intended by the other person speaking.