This is going to be a little bit of a rant for me because of what is happening at work. Understanding the concept of working harder isn’t beyond me. I actually do that when the time calls for it but I have to wonder what goes through people’s head. I’ll give a little bit of an explanation of what I mean, We have a new employee, and I was trying to show him how to do something smarter. He comes back saying, “He’s going to do it the right way!”. I’ve really thought about this all day long and wondered what is the right way to do our jobs. Are the higher up security people really watching us that closely to worry about doing it the right way? I work for a really security focused place but I also know that there is NO way they can be watching us that closely. Let us not forget we are the IT support so we may have to come up with unique ways to solve problems.
Understanding Business Justification
Some people think they have to work harder because they don’t understand this concept. What is Business Justification, according to Wikipedia:
A business case (business justification) captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also come in the form of a short verbal agreement or presentation. The logic of the business case is that, whenever resources such as money or effort are consumed, they should be in support of a specific business need.
This isn’t difficult concept, I beleive, it just tries to get people to think about how much money the business may or may not loose if we do it this way or that way. So why do employees think there is the right way and other ways are wrong? If the business justification makes it harder for us to work then they aren’t saving as much money as they could by allowing the IT depart to do things a little differently.
They give us tools to use
The tools we are allowed to use are already present and we should be able to use tools, such as programs or Windows access that not everyone has. Why give us these tools if we aren’t allowed to use them? That is the really question in my mind right now. I think the most problems we are having is people are just afraid to use the tools that we have access to because of the idea that big brother is watching us. I can’t see that happening even in a good day at our place. If you are doing your job they could care less how we do it. That’s the real issue I think because most of the time you never really know who got hired until it is too late. No matter the amount of background checks, or stuff like that we’ll always going to have someone get through those checks that shouldn’t be there in the first place. Yes I can see that may be why we do some things this way but if you really are doing your job then you shouldn’t need to worry about big brother.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
This has been my motto since I started working, I am sure there are other blogs out there that even talk about working smarter and not harder! So Why working smarter is better for you than working harder. The easy answer is that if you really think about your job and how to make your just easier than you have just started working smarter. However if you do things to keep the same output than you aren’t working smarter but working harder to seem like you are more busy than you really are. Office people are notorious for this because it keeps the boss of their backs. I’ve seen some of this at my current work but I don’t think it as bad as other places. I’ve heard about the toxic places that do worse than where I work at. I guess this rant is about over with but I just want people to consider that working harder does not help you but hinder you and make you more tired at night when you go home. Think about how you can make your work life better and you will find that you are much happier than you were few weeks ago.
Have you had this type of issue before with employees or do you work harder? let’s start a discussion and hear how you have handled it in the past.
