[HN Gopher] Complain and Propose (2014)
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Complain and Propose (2014)
Author : zdw
Score : 64 points
Date : 2024-12-27 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tidyfirst.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tidyfirst.substack.com)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| This is generally good advice, but is a recipe to get extra work
| owning the implementation of the proposal.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Or maybe you get to work on this important new thing, instead
| of whatever dumb thing you were going to be stuck doing.
| warner25 wrote:
| Yeah, I've used this to my advantage: Sell my boss on the
| idea that we had a real problem and I could address it
| instead of doing some other lower-value tasks; essentially
| re-shaping my own role into something that I found much more
| fulfilling and resume-enhancing than whatever I'd be doing
| otherwise.
| ska wrote:
| Especially in large organizations, you'll typically end up with
| more interesting/rewarding work if you help define it, than if
| you wait until something is handed to you.
| tonymet wrote:
| that's the goal
| raincom wrote:
| Often times, you know a proposal doesn't work, and yet you don't
| have chops to implement a better a solution. In that case,
| keeping quiet is the best solution; otherwise, you just make
| enemies.
| avg_dev wrote:
| one of the things i like about working at very small companies
| is that i don't have to immediately have a solution to
| everything. i can file an issue and/or mention a bug or issue
| that i see or foresee when we talk. i can then let it marinate
| until it either becomes necessary to act on it or i think of a
| solution and have time to work on it, whichever comes first.
|
| i often think of software as a series of problems. i don't have
| to worry about solutions initially. when we have polished off
| solutions to all of the truly immediately important problems -
| within some reasonable/useful level of engineering tolerances -
| the software can be thought of as done, for a time. just my
| opinion.
| omoikane wrote:
| Documenting why a proposal wouldn't work might be valuable even
| if a better solution is not immediately available, then at
| least people are aware of potential problems and perhaps
| temporarily workaround them.
|
| Depending on what's the worst outcome of "wouldn't work",
| keeping silent might be worse than making enemies.
| warner25 wrote:
| I was trained from the beginning of my career to do this, and
| trained to teach the same thing to the people reporting to me. It
| makes us all think harder, empowers lower-level people to make an
| impact, etc. Recently, though, I had someone convince me that
| it's not necessarily the best organizational practice.
|
| Essentially, there are sometimes big, systemic, intractable
| problems that lower-level people might see but not have the
| perspective, experience, etc. to even begin coming up with a
| solution. Higher-level people might have the perspective and
| experience but _not_ see those problems (especially as each layer
| of the hierarchy acts a filter or sugar-coating mechanism for bad
| news as it moves upwards). If you tell people not to report
| problems unless they have a solution, and summarily dismiss
| anyone who does so, some serious problems might just be left
| rotting.
|
| > What am I going to do if I agree with you?
|
| A reasonable response to this might actually be, "I don't know;
| isn't that why you get paid the big bucks and I don't?"
|
| Reporting problems with proposed solutions should be encouraged,
| but there shouldn't be a blanket statement of "Don't bring a me
| problem unless you have a proposed solution!" An executive can
| simply ask, "Do you have a proposal?" and if the answer is
| negative the executive can say, "I understand, interesting,
| thanks for reporting this. I'll keep it in mind / assign someone
| more senior on my staff to look into it / etc."
| ranie93 wrote:
| I wonder how the author would respond to your feedback:
|
| > Reporting problems and proposed solutions should be
| encouraged, but there shouldn't be a blanket statement of
| "Don't bring a me problem unless you have a proposed solution!"
|
| It's kind of meta because in this post itself you are employing
| a kind of complain-and-propose.
|
| Anyways I think your conclusion is entirely reasonable. I don't
| think blanket statements are most ever the solution, and I
| assume the author would agree!
| warner25 wrote:
| To be clear, in practice I think some organizational cultures
| just aggressively embrace this idea to the point of it being
| detrimental. I've heard statements with those exact words
| coming from executives, and I've seen people sort of squashed
| by executives in town hall-type forums for raising a problem
| without offering a solution.
|
| (In the line that you quoted, by the way, I just changed
| "and" to "with" for clarity.)
| 7bit wrote:
| > If you tell people not to report problems unless they have a
| solution, and summarily dismiss anyone who does so, some
| serious problems might just be left rotting.
|
| I would expand on that and say that only bad managers do so.
| They are paid for exactly that. Manage their people and remove
| the problems that make their work hard. Sure, if their direct
| reports come with a proposal already, that is great because
| they now what direction to go TK make them happy. But if the
| managers insist on their direct reports to report issues only
| with solutions, then why do they need the manager in the first
| place?
| paulcole wrote:
| > Essentially, there are sometimes big, systemic, intractable
| problems that lower-level people might see but not have the
| perspective, experience, etc. to even begin coming up with a
| solution
|
| I disagree with this and it's an excuse for people who don't
| want to think.
|
| Which is fine, I guess. It's everybody's right to not want to
| think.
|
| But it doesn't change the fact that in the vast majority of
| situations, coming up with a solution is possible. The trick is
| then to come up with one that's slightly better and then
| slightly better and so on until you run into the limit of what
| you're capable of.
|
| Challenge people to be creative. It's a skill that can be
| developed with practice.
|
| The next time somebody says they can't come up with a solution
| because of their low rank or whatever, try offering them $10k
| out of your own pocket to come up with any solution.
|
| Suddenly, I'll bet, a solution comes to them!
| warner25 wrote:
| I mostly agree with you. I suppose we should distinguish
| between a "proposal" and a "solution." I guess a "solution"
| actually satisfies a set of constraints whereas a "proposal"
| could just be dead on arrival because it fails to satisfy one
| or more constraints. The lower-level person is probably not
| even aware of all the constraints, so whatever proposal they
| come up with likely isn't going to be a solution. Demanding
| that they come up with a throwaway proposal doesn't do a lot
| of good.
|
| Example: The school lunch program is failing to adequately
| feed students. The first-year teachers stuck with lunch duty
| see it, the students see it, etc. No doubt that they can come
| up with _some_ proposal that involves spending more money on
| the lunch program, and they can even identify some other area
| to take the money from, but they don 't necessarily see the
| big picture to know why that might not be possible (e.g. tax
| dollars or grant money can only be spent in certain ways) or
| what the negative effects might be (e.g. why money is
| currently being spent in that other area).
|
| This is another way I've seen people get squashed by
| executives. As people were trained to offer a proposal when
| reporting a problem, they did so, but then it gave the
| executive an opportunity to just focus on explaining why the
| proposal can't work instead of just listening and asking
| follow-up questions to better understand the problem.
| paulcole wrote:
| I mean it seems more like the underlying issue you have is
| with how people respond to proposed solutions rather than
| that they are asked to come up with a solution at all.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I mean, the thing you quoted and said you disagree with is
| just clearly true. Take it to the extreme:
|
| Someone a week out of school can identify a problem that
| requires thousands of people coordinated by leadership across
| the organization to solve.
|
| It isn't "people don't want to think" or a failure to
| "challenge people to be creative" to recognize that many
| problems require significantly more experience or expertise
| to propose a solution to than to identify.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Someone a week out of school can identify a problem that
| requires thousands of people coordinated by leadership
| across the organization to solve.
|
| I am not suggesting that the person solve the problem. I am
| saying that they are capable of putting forth a solution.
|
| The solution may not be _complete_ , _great_ , _reasonable_
| , or _feasible_. But nobody ever got better at solving
| problems by not thinking of solutions.
|
| And shouldn't we try just asking someone for a solution
| before we get to thousands of people working to solve a
| problem?
|
| > many problems require significantly more experience or
| expertise to propose a solution to than to identify.
|
| You skipped over the part where I challenged you to put
| your own money on the line to test this belief.
|
| You really think that a single solution is impossible to
| identify for "many problems"?
|
| Hypothetically, imagine a problem you think I can't come up
| with a solution for. I will present a solution to it.
| brandonbloom wrote:
| There is a huge spectrum from no proposal at all to a magic
| bullet on a silver platter. To some extent, the default and
| implicit proposal is: "You should something about it!". Which
| is markedly worse than "_We_ should do something about it.",
| and worse still than "Let's do something about it, here's how I
| can help..."
|
| Some other useful intermediate proposals include:
|
| - "Allow me and my team time to investigate a solution."
|
| - "I've organized my complaints into requirements for a
| solution. Please identify an expert to solve the problem."
|
| - "I've socialized these problems with ${people}, I recommend
| you speak to ${person} about ${topic} for next steps."
|
| Having said that, I agree that complaints can be counted as
| "votes" for which problems to solve in the future. The problem
| is that they are not one complaint = one vote. At the very
| least, the complainer's role and responsibilities need to be
| accounted for within the scope of the larger organizational
| goals.
| warner25 wrote:
| This is great; very mature organizational thinking.
| karmakaze wrote:
| It depends on the organization or the team/reporting structure
| you find yourself in. After a few instances of thinking things
| out deeply, reporting both the problem and solution, only to
| have them sincerely acknowledged then never acted upon isn't a
| great pattern worth repeating. What seems to work better in
| those situations is to 1. complain, 2. chip away at the problem
| in the open, 3. socialize suggestions, 4. make small inline
| changes toward a north star which solves the problem. Basically
| change the current system to bring the solution closer to the
| point that someone pulls the trigger and says let's get this
| done.
| creer wrote:
| This is also a common administrative punishment method:
|
| "You seem to understand that problem. Why don't you study it
| more in depth and return a proposal on what to do about it".
|
| Unsaid: "in addition to your current workload."
|
| Also unsaid "that will learn you to be a smartass".
|
| (Which is okay if it's a problem you DO want to make your life
| about - but still with the understanding that this new
| assignement was meant as punishement and is not what will get
| you promoted. At least not unless it's spectacularly
| successful.)
| bsder wrote:
| Your semi-regular reminder that Kent Beck was one of the people
| who failed-upward from the disaster that was Extreme Programming
| for the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System.
|
| You should take both management and programming advice from him
| with _large_ grains of salt.
| tikhonj wrote:
| When this attitude becomes too prevalent, important problems
| either don't get reported at all or morph into "the problem is
| that we're not implementing my exact solution". That's how you
| end up with pervasive organizational problems festering, while
| executives develop a wholly disconnected model of what's
| happening at the company, with the solutions that manage to get
| through partially addressing the problem _at best_.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Another related thing I've encountered is positive/growth vs
| negative/fixed mindset. Often in discussions someone will make a
| suggestion and someone else will give a reason why that's not
| feasible. Everyone might be silent for a moment as no one has a
| solution off-hand to deal with it and the idea is squashed.
|
| One time I made a run-time query optimizer which wasn't all that
| complicated in any one area but had numerous mechanisms and fall-
| backs (and a lot of plumbing code). A colleague remarked how he
| would never have come up with that and listed all the problems
| which would have needed to be solved along the way to make it all
| work. I replied that he basically described the roadmap for what
| I had done step by step. It's sort of like that advice about not
| giving up on the first "no". Usually a list of reasons why
| something _can 't_ be done rarely contains any actual impossible
| ones and in many cases can be transformed into a list of things
| that can.
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