This week we continue to discuss the reasons for why do we make our own life harder by creating new problems when solving the existing ones. Here is what you should be aware of: Continue reading
If you’re reading this blog, it means you’re spending some time on the Internet. It may also mean that while browsing you’ve encountered at least one of the endless variations of the “Doing it wrong” or “You had one job” memes.
If not, these memes make a laugh of exactly what their titles describe – how the simplest tasks performed by others could go completely and ridiculously wrong. Continue reading
A working pattern comes to life when we start doing something systematically and repeatedly. It could be something very basic, such as always reading your morning e-mails with a cup of coffee in hand or something a bit less innocent, such as never providing positive feedback without saying something critical first. The main point here is that every one of us has his or her own way of doing every specific task and this way may differ from how other people approach the same task. Why am I talking about something as obvious as that? Continue reading
After my previous posts on Office Politics I got some very interesting reactions from readers. Many of them included the same question: How to be good at Office Politics without getting into unnecessary conflicts? In order to answer this question, we have to understand why engaging in Politics leads to conflicts initially. Continue reading
After discussing the basic properties of Office Politics and the importance of gossiping correctly in order to succeed at it, I would like to discuss the concept of Social Status.
If gossip is one of the main tools of Office Politics, status is its main currency, being lost or acquired through different actions and interactions. For some people, the goal is to achieve maximum level of status, however if you’ve ever heard about Peter Principle, you may consider achieving optimal status instead. Continue reading
In my previous post I did my best to present the concept of Legitimate Office Politics, while stressing the importance of doing it properly. Now let’s deal with one of its most basic aspects – participating in Office Gossip.
There are people who have a natural and an understandable aversion to any kind of gossip. They usually think something like: “I don’t like it when people discuss me behind my back, so I’m not ready to discuss others behind their backs”. However, one glance at the history of humankind can prove that gossiping is such an important part of our lives that there is no escaping it. Continue reading
This is clearly our most favorite aspect of office life to complain about. It’s hard to imagine a normal person expressing any liking for all the intrigues, gossips and “pointless” conversations filled with personal agendas and lacking any practical goal. Mostly we try to distance ourselves from “all that” or at least we like to think that we do. Continue reading
The vacation passed too quickly, so here I am, back to my quest against Biases on the pages of AnyaWorkSmart. Even though I met a lot of interesting people and done a lot of interesting things in the last weeks, there is nothing like getting back to what I really like 🙂
Here is a quick preview of what I would like to share with you in the following months: Continue reading
Even though I advised you guys against becoming the Lonely Hero who holds the world on his shoulders, this is a lot like I feel for the last few months :-). Wearing so many crucial hats simultaneously could be and is a hard job. So I decided that at least two weeks of not doing anything at all would be in order for me.
However, AnyaWorkSmart being still Anya Work Smart, there is no going on vacation, without leaving a relevant message behind. And here it is – make sure that you also remind yourself of your right to rest. Look at that like at another perspective of being a manager – manage yourself like you would manage others. And you do let your employees rest, right? 🙂
So, see you all in two weeks and I promise to bring a lot of vacation-inspired inspiration to the pages of my blog.
🙂
Welcoming a new employee into the Team could be a serious challenge, as there is always a chance that something would go wrong and precious potential would go wasted on unnecessary complications. Many pitfalls await the new guy as he tries to navigate the labyrinth of the new workplace: taking too long to start delivering, making a lot of mistakes and asking wrong people for help, being unable to connect socially because of trying too hard or not trying hard enough, and many others. Continue reading
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