Too close to make it better

Are you too close to something to see how to make it better?

There is a phrase “can’t see the wood for the trees” that describes being too close to something to be able to see the bigger picture. When you work on something for a long time it is easy to get into this state.

At the moment we are employing two consultants to help us gain that external viewpoint. The first one is focused on how we can improve our approach to the product side of the business. The second is focused on helping our IT department reboot the way it works and rebuild its perception across the business.

I’ll focus on the latter as that is directly related to my area.

For this exercise to be a success it needs everyone to engage with it. If those involved aren’t willing to listen to advice then it has much less chance of making a difference. It is very easy when dealing with a consultant to feel that your job is under threat or it is a sign of lack of confidence in your ability. However if the attitude is that this is an investment in making my job better then that whole mindset shift makes a big difference.

As a brief aside, many years ago I worked at a bank and one of the engineers was close to being let go; discussions were happening about making him redundant. They decided to give him one last chance. I worked closely with him, being extra tough on reviewing his code, giving him advice where needed. He is still working at the same bank now, nearly 10 years later.

I could take credit for mentoring him but that would be wrong. The reason he is still there is the attitude he had. He didn’t take my reviews as criticism, he took them as a way to learn. It took time but he improved massively and it was all down to that mindset.

Back to now, I caught up with the IT consultant at the end of the first week and he provided a whole list of things to work on or improve. Very few of the suggestions came as a surprise. There were a few nice ways of doing things but overall they were things I already knew.

If I knew them already why had they not been addressed?

Maybe we were too close to it and it needed someone outside the day to day to highlight them. Maybe it needed someone to focus purely on that area and bring their experience to it? Maybe it just needed an investment of time to address the issues? There are multiple potential reasons but even a week of effort has made an impact already.

In this article Seth Godin makes a great observation.

If someone with less skill and less dedication than you took over your job, could they degrade the quality of your work?

I think the obvious answer is yes and we could identify loads of ways that could happen. However he then flips it around and asks:

If someone with more skill and dedication took over your work, how many ways could they make it better?

For me, this is a really interesting question and effectively introduces that external view of the role discussed above. This is an exercise I plan to do soon for my own role. I know there are a whole bunch of areas I can improve and maybe this will provide a plan to reboot it in the new year.