When was the last time you lost your cool at a colleague who was not able to accomplish the task as per your expectations? Or were you at a loss because of a team mate who didn’t deliver crucial information for your project which led to delay in your submission?
We all must have faced challenges with respect to people we work with. Often this results in being judgmental about people’s capabilities or at times even their intent of delivering on the goals. Slowly one starts to build buffer timelines in order to accommodate the delays due to this mismatch of expectations and what is actually delivered from other people.
Building processes around day-to-day tasks becomes the sine qua non in most organizations to manage the efficiency and delivery by the human resources. The more processes an organization is able to build the lesser reliance it has to put on its people who may at times falter either on the quality or the quantity of their deliverable.
Building process and automation eases human errors in monotonous work by becoming an accepted way and a documented standard operating procedure for carrying out different tasks. It allows for stated norms of expectations from people till someone further challenges it to better the process.
Another benefit of automation and processes is keeping in check on emotional outbursts. One may find it difficult or absurd to shout at a process or system who will not respond back. The reaction could be different basis the power equation one may have with the other colleague. Anger, which one may experience for his subordinate or peer, for instance, is replaced by helplessness or frustration in case the person responsible for non achievement or delay is a superior leader.
One may also indulge in selective reactive process basis the relation one has developed with different people. A colleague who is also an office buddy will get a different and kinder treatment for the same loss which one may incur with another colleague.
Circumstances hence are neutral from a standpoint of our reaction to them. In a similar situation of not meeting the goal or expectation, one may react differently to a colleague who is also a friend by giving them an encouraging shout; to a senior leader the same person may use words and tonality to gather support for future accomplishment; or simply get into an acceptance mode if the cause of frustration is a system failure. In situations where one exercises power over another, what can you do to remain calm and objective reminding yourself that ultimately people are more important than processes!
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