Work Suggestions
Do what you say you will do when you said you would. This should be the first commandment of work, maybe of life. How many times have you been disappointed
by someone not doing what they said they would? At work, missing commitments can be the kiss of death. Your co-workers will not trust you and your boss will fire you. But there is an easy way out if you see that you will not be able
to meet a commitment. Tell them that you can’t meet it, tell them why, and reset their expectations as to when you will be able to meet it. Or maybe the issue is too difficult to be done in a reasonable time, or at all. High tech issues
can be like that. Ask for help, negotiate a change in the goal, but don’t just miss the commitment.
Deal with it. If something is not going well – sales are down, production is off, process yield is not where it
should be, deal with it. Don’t assume that things will get better without you taking action.
Answer e-mails promptly. All e-mails should be answered the same day they are received. Important e-mails
should be answered within an hour or two. The answer may be “I will check on it and get back to you by ___” but at lease the sender knows that the e-mail was received and is being worked on. For those who work in an environment where
phone messages are used to ask for action, the same thing applies. Answer them the same day as they were received.
Quality in what you do. Do not settle for poor results or mistakes. This applies to your own work
and to the work of others that you are responsible for. This is important even if the result is not very important of does not really matter. By insisting on quality work you set the expectations of those who work with or for you. They
will expect and get good results. I will give an example of what I mean when I say quality is important in issues even when the result may not really matter. Let’s say that one of the folks you supervise writes a report that will not get
wide circulation, or fills out an online request that you will approve, and you find typos, errors in grammar, or other minor mistakes. Send it back to be corrected. The person who wrote it will get the message that you care about such things,
and in the future he/she will hopefully be more careful. And that will matter in the future when the work is important.
Shortcuts – maybe not. Be very wary of taking shortcuts in a process. If you are supposed
to follow a defined path, or method of accomplishing a task, taking a shortcut and bypassing steps may be a very bad idea. I will cite an example from the semiconductor industry without being specific as to in which company this happed. That is
because it has happened in almost every semiconductor company. And it is very costly in time and money. The design of a semiconductor product is a very difficult detailed process. The last step is running a software tool to examine
layout vs design, called LVS for short. Running this tool is time consuming, and typically at this stage in the design the project is right up against the schedule limits agreed to. What can happen is a design engineer sees at the last minute that
the product needs a tweak, or minor change in the design, makes the change to the layout but does not go back and run the LVS tool. The design goes forward, the masks are made, the product is fabricated, and it doesn’t work. It is found that
the minor change was implemented incorrectly, or it adversely affected a function that the product was required to have, and the whole design has to be done over from the LVS stage. This may mean two to three months and several millions of dollars lost.
Re-read what you have written before sending it out to the distribution. I have always had difficulty proof reading my own writing as I know what I meant and tend to not see my mistakes. If it is an important document, have someone
proof read it for you. My father told me that he often waited until the next day to proof read what he had written. He was more likely to see his mistakes or omissions that way. By the way, automatic spell check is wonderful.
I am a terrible speller, but earlier in my career I had secretaries who typed what I and written. As good PC based work processer programs came to the workplace, secretaries went away, but spell check fixed my spelling deficiency.
Have
good table manners. Everyone from time to time will dine with co-workers and supervisors. No one wants to dine repeatedly with someone who chews their food with their mouth open, talks with food in their mouth, doesn’t know how to properly
hold a fork, eats with their arms on the table. Bad table manners are like quality in your work. It is easy to do it correctly even if you have to read a book on good table manners. My mother used to say that my sisters and I should always
eat like we were dining with The Queen. Haven’t yet, but I am ready.
Play golf decently. This suggestion may not be up there with some of the previous ones, but golf and work often do go together. Many companies
have golf outings, or vendors have golf events that you will be invited to play. You don’t have to be really good at golf, but you should not be really bad. Knowing the basic rules is important so that you don’t embarrass yourself or
your host. Years ago my oldest son called me up and said “dad, teach me how to play golf”. I was elated as I had been suggesting to him that learning to play golf might be a good idea for his career, and besides it is fun.
I asked him when he wanted to start; he said he was invited to play in a corporate tournament next weekend so can we do it this evening? I asked a bit more about the event, which involved either golf or tennis. He was a pretty good tennis player,
so I strongly suggested he do the tennis part. The point being that no one learns how to play golf in a day or two or 100 or maybe never, but it is never too early to start.