Sep 9, 2022·edited Sep 9, 2022Liked by Tim Casasola
One of the many things I started noticing only when I started working as a consultant, seeing companies from the outside, it' just what you described: the insane amount of time people spend in polishing work for others.
A recurring jokes from client is about me not wanting anything to do with slide decks.
That's because when I started coaching my focus shifted into having good conversation, and away from producing deliverables.
I think that this obsession with polishing deliverables hides an unwillingness or incapability of having good conversations.
A few weeks ago a client was worried about not communicating well enough about their re-org, and the solution was to prepare a "better slide deck" as a sort of weekly newsletter about the transformation.
Them: "People don't know what we are doing!"
Me: "Why should they care?"
(oh, even the hint that people might just not care made them furious!)
In the moment, I thought we were discussing about having a meeting with the potential recipients of those slides, but no: they just sent the slides (after obsessing over them for weeks), without any conversation, hoping that having better looking slides with more information would be enough (spoiler: it won't).
Spending a lot of time on these deliverables and having them (mostly) ignored also keeps alive one of the most fundamental communication asymmetry that we have out there: it's always gonna be you (the good one, having spent lots of time on the deliverable) against them (the bad ones, ignoring or demeaning your work), further enlarging the communication gap.
One of the many things I started noticing only when I started working as a consultant, seeing companies from the outside, it' just what you described: the insane amount of time people spend in polishing work for others.
A recurring jokes from client is about me not wanting anything to do with slide decks.
That's because when I started coaching my focus shifted into having good conversation, and away from producing deliverables.
I think that this obsession with polishing deliverables hides an unwillingness or incapability of having good conversations.
A few weeks ago a client was worried about not communicating well enough about their re-org, and the solution was to prepare a "better slide deck" as a sort of weekly newsletter about the transformation.
Them: "People don't know what we are doing!"
Me: "Why should they care?"
(oh, even the hint that people might just not care made them furious!)
In the moment, I thought we were discussing about having a meeting with the potential recipients of those slides, but no: they just sent the slides (after obsessing over them for weeks), without any conversation, hoping that having better looking slides with more information would be enough (spoiler: it won't).
Spending a lot of time on these deliverables and having them (mostly) ignored also keeps alive one of the most fundamental communication asymmetry that we have out there: it's always gonna be you (the good one, having spent lots of time on the deliverable) against them (the bad ones, ignoring or demeaning your work), further enlarging the communication gap.