![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
finish line recognition
Mar. 31st, 2022 04:12 pmso this happened...
person who works for me walked by me in the hallway and said: "Hey I got that article posted."
me: oh AWESOME everyone will be thrilled! you know even our VPs wanted an article on that topic, I'll tell them!
person: great byeeeee.
then she walked away.
I checked out the article and emailed my fellow leaders and presidents that it was done, with the link and backstory and nice words. they emailed me back to say thank you TO ME, and then I realized my middle manager mistake, I did not deserve this thanks, so I had to reply all and say "well suzy wrote the article so thanks suzy!"
yes I know... I should have said in my first email to them that "suzy got this great article done".
but here's the perfect scenario:
1) suzy sends ME that nice email with her words around it, a quick summary everyone can understand.
2) I reply to her to say thanks great job but copy my senior leaders.
me asking suzy for that email is one more dang thing I'm asking her for, as a manager I have so many tasks on my mind it was easier to just write it up myself really quickly. this happens all the time.
but it's my job to delegate so next time I'll tell her to do that.
You could also say that she KNEW that the other leaders and whole organization would want to know about the article. I am always trying to get my team to think through the Larger Organizational Interestingness... who needs to know about a thing? who needs a summary? what questions will they have? this was an opportunity for suzy to get recognized by leadership, but she didn't notice. if she'd sent the nice buttoned-up in one package email for me, I wouldn't have had a way to NOT notice.
I'm still working through this. I just know that we all struggle to "sell ourselves" in technical fields. we don't celebrate our wins. we keep our heads down and into the drawings.
but this is to say... if you did something great this week and want the credit, email your boss?
also, nobody ever understands just how important executive summaries are. in a large organization, one's ability to summarize major accomplishments in three sentences is like... cold fusion important.
person who works for me walked by me in the hallway and said: "Hey I got that article posted."
me: oh AWESOME everyone will be thrilled! you know even our VPs wanted an article on that topic, I'll tell them!
person: great byeeeee.
then she walked away.
I checked out the article and emailed my fellow leaders and presidents that it was done, with the link and backstory and nice words. they emailed me back to say thank you TO ME, and then I realized my middle manager mistake, I did not deserve this thanks, so I had to reply all and say "well suzy wrote the article so thanks suzy!"
yes I know... I should have said in my first email to them that "suzy got this great article done".
but here's the perfect scenario:
1) suzy sends ME that nice email with her words around it, a quick summary everyone can understand.
2) I reply to her to say thanks great job but copy my senior leaders.
me asking suzy for that email is one more dang thing I'm asking her for, as a manager I have so many tasks on my mind it was easier to just write it up myself really quickly. this happens all the time.
but it's my job to delegate so next time I'll tell her to do that.
You could also say that she KNEW that the other leaders and whole organization would want to know about the article. I am always trying to get my team to think through the Larger Organizational Interestingness... who needs to know about a thing? who needs a summary? what questions will they have? this was an opportunity for suzy to get recognized by leadership, but she didn't notice. if she'd sent the nice buttoned-up in one package email for me, I wouldn't have had a way to NOT notice.
I'm still working through this. I just know that we all struggle to "sell ourselves" in technical fields. we don't celebrate our wins. we keep our heads down and into the drawings.
but this is to say... if you did something great this week and want the credit, email your boss?
also, nobody ever understands just how important executive summaries are. in a large organization, one's ability to summarize major accomplishments in three sentences is like... cold fusion important.