It's a battle between good and evil. A battle between what is and what can be. A battle between fate and tenacity. A battle that can only be won by one side.
Would that side be me?
Everything that could go wrong basically did today. My email wasn't working, I was in spreadsheet hell, and I was still battling the SLACK resistance. How in the world could I be expected to have any effect on communication change today?
HOW!?!?!
Despite all the SNAFU moments in my day, every time I spoke with a coworker I had to act like ...
When I what I was really feeling like was ...
And to make matters worse, I wasn't the only one having a SNAFU Monday. It seemed to be an epidemic in the office.
I had two choices really.
1) Give in and have a "Case of the Mondays"
or
2) Find a way to use all the SNAFU moments to my advantage to incite change in my environment.
In the book Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, they state right from the beginning that, "to change someone's behavior, you've got to change that person's situation (Heath, C., & Heath, D., 2010)."
There was a light at the end of this tunnel.
Situation: My email wasn't working
It was clear how I could use this SNAFU to change the situation of my coworkers. If I couldn't receive email, they would need another way to send me documents and/or messages. This began to solve my second problem of the day because the only other method of contacting me was then SLACK.
Still, I knew there was something more making it hard for them to catch on to this new program, and as I set up my new computer I finally figured out what it was. Instead of downloading the program onto their computers, they were accessing it via web browser. Because of this they weren't receiving the audio notifications or the blinking icon at the bottom of their screens. How could I have been so daft as to not think of that?
Again I had found a way to slightly change the situation. By downloading the programs onto their computers and by making it the only available way to contact me they began to warm up to it a little more. Not as much as I'd like them to ... but it's a start.
References:
Amabile, Teresa & Kramer, Steven J. (2011, May). The Power of Small Wins. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
Heath, Chip, & Heath, Dan. (2010) Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard. New York, NY: Random House.
Would that side be me?
Everything that could go wrong basically did today. My email wasn't working, I was in spreadsheet hell, and I was still battling the SLACK resistance. How in the world could I be expected to have any effect on communication change today?
HOW!?!?!
Despite all the SNAFU moments in my day, every time I spoke with a coworker I had to act like ...
When I what I was really feeling like was ...
And to make matters worse, I wasn't the only one having a SNAFU Monday. It seemed to be an epidemic in the office.
I had two choices really.
1) Give in and have a "Case of the Mondays"
or
2) Find a way to use all the SNAFU moments to my advantage to incite change in my environment.
In the book Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, they state right from the beginning that, "to change someone's behavior, you've got to change that person's situation (Heath, C., & Heath, D., 2010)."
There was a light at the end of this tunnel.
Situation: My email wasn't working
It was clear how I could use this SNAFU to change the situation of my coworkers. If I couldn't receive email, they would need another way to send me documents and/or messages. This began to solve my second problem of the day because the only other method of contacting me was then SLACK.
Still, I knew there was something more making it hard for them to catch on to this new program, and as I set up my new computer I finally figured out what it was. Instead of downloading the program onto their computers, they were accessing it via web browser. Because of this they weren't receiving the audio notifications or the blinking icon at the bottom of their screens. How could I have been so daft as to not think of that?
Again I had found a way to slightly change the situation. By downloading the programs onto their computers and by making it the only available way to contact me they began to warm up to it a little more. Not as much as I'd like them to ... but it's a start.
"Even ordinary, incremental progress can increase people's engagement in the work and their happiness during the workday."
~ Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer
Harvard Business Review
References:
Amabile, Teresa & Kramer, Steven J. (2011, May). The Power of Small Wins. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
Heath, Chip, & Heath, Dan. (2010) Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard. New York, NY: Random House.
Some days it is far too easy to allow myself to slip into frustration and simply give up hope of productivity for the day. Your post is a great reminder that by stating what our problems are and how we can those moments of frustration to our advantage, we can actually boost our productivity and alter our mood from negative to positive.
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