Two Weeks Notice > One Year OJT

Some of you already know that I gave notice at work and I’m moving to Chicago this week. I actually gave conditional notice a couple of months ago. Among other things, I asked to work on different projects.

The roles for technical communicators are pretty set at our company, but other departments do change and restructure quite a bit. I wanted to work on internal and external audience research and content strategy. It was a long shot, but not inconceivable.

My manager asked me, in several different one-on-one meetings, about what I wanted to work on. She took notes, and took those notes to her managers, but nobody ever said anything more about it, beyond my manager apologizing for the delay, and eventually it became clear that my long shot was out of range.

The Gauntlet is Not Just an E-Book

My manager explained that if I were to stay, one of my main focuses would be on mentoring.

What I heard was that I would work on .chms and WebHelps in a Tech Comm department silo until it was too late to break free into the next tax bracket.

This, of course, was an overreaction. But to call the mentoring role a cul-de-sac probably wasn’t an exaggeration, and that was hard to face. It was a skill set I wanted, but it wasn’t the time or the place.

I was intrigued, though, by her insistence on the team’s autonomy, and by my reaction to it. Consequently, it seemed everything I read or heard in the following weeks was related.

I had already seen this RSA white-board animation, actually, of a talk by Dan Pink, in which he says what people want most is autonomy. Okay, but how does that translate into a successful team?

I heard a bit on NPR about Frank Oppenheimer’s hands-off running of the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the brilliant research that was produced in that environment. I’m having a hard time finding that July 13 story on NPR, but here’s an interview with his biographer. Anyway, I thought, “Well, but maybe you have to have people with the right experience and talent.”

In a nutshell, I picked at my blind spot. I could tell that I had an irrational resistance to something that I was fundamentally misunderstanding. Then I heard a podcast that, when it reminded me of work, made me wonder if I might be pushing the healthy limits of thinking on a work problem. I’ll share it with you anyway.

A Great Department Takes Time, and Manuals Aren’t Babies

One of my favorite radio shows is “This American Life” on Chicago Public Radio. Four months after the 2009 earthquake in Haiti, they did a show about the lagging relief efforts there.

The show outlines the obstacles in a program for helping mango farmers, a history of failed aid efforts in Haiti, and the contrast between a long-running missionary hospital and the Haitian-run clinic to which a doctor from the missionary hospital has transferred.

The doctor could be much more effective, in the short term, at the missionary hospital. The site was equipped for many more procedures than the Haitian-run clinic, and the American staff were trained to run in an efficient manner that was not the case at the Haitian-run clinic.

The trade off was the level of control and paternalism. Until recently, the wife of one of the founding doctors had worn the key to the medicine closet around her neck. One night when she was ill, they’d had to carry her out of her bed to unlock it for an emergency surgery.

The doctor ran the American clinic. At the Haitian clinic, he was one doctor among many. He was not in charge of anything. He had to watch people with injuries–including babies–that were relatively simple to treat suffer inefficient care, travel great distances from facility to facility to get their needs met, and sometimes die as a result.

It was frustrating, but perhaps less so than having the Haitian people resent the help they were receiving. The doctor was rejecting the “benevolent dictatorship” of the missionary hospital, which he saw as a failed model.

“The choice to then go the other extreme; to purposely work hard at not becoming a dictator for the sake of building community means that people are going to suffer, people are going to die. Goods will not be provided; services will not be rendered.”

In our case, no one is likely to die. Deadlines may not be met. Clients may not be impressed. They might be so unimpressed that they never press F1 again. Maybe those things will happen, and if we’re not measuring, we’ll never even know.

It’s a risk I’ll train myself to take.

Did AmerIndians Have Kaizen? How to Use Metrics

A People’s History of Business Trends

I took American History as an Advanced Placement course in high school, so I’m not sure why signed up for it again my second semester at New College, but it was worth it.

The class met in a small, bookshelf-lined room in a waterfront mansion built in the 1920′s by John and Mabel Ringling. As in Ringling Brothers. We sat around a shiny oak table and discussed our readings with a professor who entertained the Dalai Lama whenever His Holiness was in town. 

Photo by livingonimpulse.

When we started reading about Andrew Jackson, and the Trail of Tears, the professor started off the discussion referring to Native Americans as American Indians and then shortened it thereafter to AmerIndians, which was handy. I wonder if any of the other students wanted to cop the term as badly as I wanted to. None of us did; not in class. In fact, I don’t remember many of us talking much at all. But I was pretty dumbstruck by most of the New College experience, so maybe it was just me who was mute.

For the first time, I saw what happened to American Indians as a series of political plays. By themselves, many of the moves were cold-blooded and villainous, some were regular old greed and bureaucracy. The process of genocide became even more shocking when conversationally disrobed of its mystery. It was a great class.

I’m also part Cherokee (who isn’t?), and I’ve done some reading about their culture. So, when I began slowly making my way through A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, this summer, I had already read a bit about social and governance traditions for various tribes when I came across this passage quoting historian Dale Van Every:

The freedom of the individual was regarded by practically all Indians north of Mexico as a canon infinitely more precious than the individual’s duty to his community or nation.

Zinn goes on to describe tribal government as, “an occasional assembling of a council, with a very loose and changing membership, whose decisions were not enforced except by the influence of public opinion.”

During my New College years, that would have pleased me, though I doubt I could have actually envisioned the daily functioning of that kind of system. Now, it makes me uneasy. I mean, isn’t that just a vague meeting with action items like, “Okay, consider doing what we discussed today,” and, “Make sure everyone knows how advisable this is”? Shudder.

Zinn quotes a minister who lived among Indians, “. . . [A] government in which there are no positive laws, but only long established habits and customs, no code of jurisprudence . . . in which age confers rank, wisdom gives power, and moral goodness secures title to universal respect.” It sounded dismally conservative and unchanging to me. Where was the continuous improvement?

As I read the chapter and experienced my own reaction, I realized I would probably horrify New-College-Age me.

In Which I Overwhelm and Alienate

In the past year, I have been reading about content strategy, so I’ve been learning how to base content, including product documentation, on business needs. To some extent, my company does this naturally. They know that we need docs to satisfy the labeling requirement imposed by the FDA, so they hired all us tech writers. Of course, docs can do more than that, but justifying the means to other business ends requires some sales work on our part. So I’ve become obsessed with various metrics that can help with that.

I’ve also been working on audience analysis, with the goals of making our writing process more efficient and our information more findable. I’ve wanted to measure the users so that we can only write what we need to, with the assumption that we are currently writing way to much about some things and not enough about other things. The assumption is that we are not instinctually writing what the users need, nor are we hitting the mark based on the few anecdotes that have been shared with us.

I have wanted to be systematic, and there has been friction. I had my review last week, and I had all high marks, but with one piece of criticism regarding my collaboration skills, “. . .[S]ometimes Kristi can overwhelm and alienate her team mates with her initiatives and the depth to which she wants to be systematic in her approach.” Ouch.

It was not the first time my boss has mentioned this, and I’ve been working on it. It’s been hard for me to empathize with the aversion to metrics. My boss has expressed such a faith in the autonomy of the team, though, and in honoring their interests and preferences, that I’ve been exploring this blind spot of mine.

My reaction to the AmerIndian anarchy provided a clue. Maybe I should be doing metrics in moderation. Maybe I am overindulging. Commerce has not always been in this form, as Clue Train points out, and continuous improvement might arrive by other paths. If too many numbers spell a fear-based workplace for some people, what is the proper role for metrics?

In Which I Count Calories for Less Than a Week

I have had an extra 30 pounds on me since not long after I started working as a technical writer. I’m 5’10”, so it’s not as extreme as it might be for a smaller woman, but it’s still uncomfortable.

I’ve had a few anorexic friends. I have a pretty good idea of what an unhealthy food conversation sounds like. I feel half-anorexic after one conversation about food with just about any woman, and so I have resisted  counting calories, but I’m doing it for a limited time to recalibrate my ability to judge how much food is too much for one day. I’m doing it because I was running four and five miles and still not dropping pounds.

And after about two weeks of not even being diligent about the calorie counting, I’m seeing a difference.

It was the same way with budgeting. I set up the budget, and was diligent about counting every dollar for three or four months, and then I just internalized it. I more or less memorized the amounts and got used to the idea that there was a finite number of dollars available.

So how does that relate to performance metrics? How does it relate to the business goals of product documentation, and measuring the needs of customers?

Maybe it’s just that people don’t want their entire working days tied to someone else’s interpretation of the numbers. Maybe people want some control over which numbers are helpful. Maybe we want people we trust to lead that discussion, or else we’re going to keep doing what has gotten us raises and reasonable working hours, thanks very much.

How to Turn a Destination Wedding into a Blog Post

My sister got married this past weekend at Copper Mountain ski resort in Colorado. About 40 of us flew in to dance and drink at high altitudes in celebration with the couple. We stayed in luxury cabins they had rented for the weekend, catching up with family and mixing with friends and family of the bride and groom.

I am not a fan of destination weddings, as a rule, but they did a good job of keeping it low key. And anyway, they have family and friends all over the country. Most of us were going to have to fly somewhere and get a hotel. Why not fly to Colorado?

I’d missed a couple of family reunions, so I had to give the abridged story of my 20s for some aunts and uncles. It’s interesting to me to see where people’s eyes glaze over.

Besides the catching up, there were logistics to communicate about. That can be a good icebreaker for talking to housemates you don’t know– “Can you help me find the coffee?” and “Let’s figure out how this TV works.” Instant conversation.

Village Rules: No Can’t and No Elbows

When we were little, the uncle that my sister and I were closest to was our Uncle Tim. He spent the most time with us, and he was fun. He took us bike riding, told us jokes, and let us play his Sega.

Uncle Tim tried to help teach us things. It usually worked because we looked up to him. At the wedding, he and I got on the topic of people and experiences that had influenced us. He had a boss once who used to always say, “Can’t never got anything done.” I recognized the phrase immediately as something he’d said to us. It had stuck with me, too.

The two of us had quite different interpretations of the aphorism. He took it to mean that he should be as independent as possible–try everything he can on his own before saying he can’t do something and asking for help.

I use it as a reminder to ask for help in a positive way. When I go to a more experienced person for help, I don’t say I “can’t” do something—I explain why I’m having trouble and offer a couple of possible solutions I’d like to try once I get more guidance. I think that’s a form of independence; making it easy for someone to help me.

I had almost forgotten where I’d learned the saying. Getting to spend time with Uncle Tim was one of the best parts of the wedding trip.

Another thing I remember about my uncle is that my mom getting super pissed once because he thumped me at the dinner table for having my elbows on the table. Thumping for manners was something their dad, my grandfather, had done, and I guess my mom disagreed with it. It’s interesting how people negotiate the boundaries for influencing kids.

I don’t happen to think elbows on the table matters much, for the record, as long as you’re sitting up straight.

How to Help the Bride (and Other Stressed-Out People)

I mentioned that the bride and groom arranged the cabin rentals. They also arranged for car rentals, coordinated drives to and from the airport, arranged several group meals and activities, and made all the usual catering and floral decisions, all from a thousand miles away in Chicago.

It was an extra level of special to have us together for three days vacationing together for the wedding, but it was also and extra level of stress. The couple had friends and family to visit in three different houses, coming and going and many different times.

At 9:30 on the last night, it still wasn’t clear who all was riding with who back to the airport. I caught up with my sister as she was headed up the hill to have s’mores with her friends at the house up the hill.

“Do you know yet who can drive us to the hotel tomorrow on their way to the airport?” I asked.

“No, but we’ll figure it out tonight.”

“Okay, well let’s talk about it before it gets too much later, because some people are going to bed soon. Did you know Mom and Dad are leaving at 7 a.m.? Did you say good-bye to them, yet?”

“No. They are? Shoot. Okay.” She stood in the front of the door with her coat and purse, looking uncertain.

“What do you want to do?” This is what I said, but what I should have said was, “How can I help you get that done so you can say good-bye to everyone?”

“What do you think I should do?” she asked. It was another opportunity for me to make a constructive suggestion.

“I think you should say good-bye to mom and dad before they go to bed.” This was not very helpful. It’s established that she has to say good-bye. My reiterating that was just bossy and stubborn. And I could tell by her face that I’d added to her stress.

I see people do this at work, and I’ve done it. You’ve probably seen someone making a stressful situation for themselves and for others by having not been perfectly prepared, or by not having done some research they should have. The meeting is stalled, or people have to stay late. It’s not often easy to be gracious under those circumstances. But it’s worth it.

Because nothing is gained by being self-righteous about how things ought to have been done. People rolling their eyes when a co-worker can’t get the projector going for a meeting, getting impatient to rush out the door at quitting time, and impatient about uncertainty in a project. What are you proving? That you’re fabulous and this would never happen to you? How fabulous are you if you aren’t making the situation better?

Yes, people should be vigilant about being prepared. Yes, people should respect your time. But you should get over yourself. With all the energy you’re wasting imagining how they should have done it better, you could have done something to help. Made small talk with someone else who’s waiting. Made a suggestion on how to move forward without the missing information. Made a plan to contact the necessary resource and meet again in an hour. Anything that doesn’t involve making a frustrating situation more negative. And waiting until you get back to your desk to complain doesn’t count.

You might think you know why a person is screwing up, and it might be because they suck. Or you might just be acting like an asshole.

ORIGINAL: How the Jobs I Left Off My Resume Prepared Me for Tech Comm

About edited posts: I’m putting selected posts through another iteration. Some need tweaks to the tone, some need more sentences in active voice, some could use a more substantial rewrite to better support their main ideas, and some just need better proofreading. Okay, they all need better proofreading.

About this post: I needed to better demonstrate how the job lessons pertain to tech comm. Additionally, I made some edits to make the post more appropriate as something that’s available from my LinkedIn profile. The edited post is available here.
It used to be that the resume articles I read were almost unanimous in advising against the multi-page resume. That may have been partly because I was focused on materials for less experienced workers, but if I’m not mistaken it has become less taboo to break into the second page. Still, until now I have been an entry-level or near entry-level job seeker, and I’ve felt that I ought to keep myself to one page. That plus the desire to leave out some shorter or irrelevant job stints in my younger years led me to leave some things off my resume.

Currently, my resume starts with my current position, then talks about my STC involvement, then my previous position as a bartender, partly to bridge back to job coaching (think task analysis) experience. It stops there. But, I think some of the positions before that were formative, too.

Phone Jobs

I have had two extended stints doing phone surveys; “market research.” I’ve also done a couple of very short, tortuous forays into phone sales. This is probably my most important undeclared skill—talking to customers on the phone. I’m not always the smoothest, but I have a decent voice and I know the important stuff. No negative phrasing, no yes-or-no questions, smile, assume a positive response and move forward with your reason for calling.

There are also basic courtesies for dealing with anyone on the phone, client or no; what I tend to think of as “phone usability.” Ask if they have time to talk, leave short messages, leave your number every time, make a list of every thing you have to ask before you call.

The most important part might be knowing when to call. At my office job in a large company, I think phone calls are for more complex issues, or things too urgent to wait for an email response, or for when an email string shows signs of getting sour. Some teams prefer the phone even without these considerations, but I think it can be an unnecessary interruption. Let people add less urgent requests to their list as they come in via email.

Day Care Teacher

I was a teacher for a group of three and four-year-olds for a couple of months before I became a job coach. Later I helped a woman find a job as a day care teacher. Between those two experiences, I attended quite a few trainings on how to entertain, redirect, and encourage kids. This stuff applies to dealing with absolutely everyone, and I still practice it today. And I do mean practice.

I also learned that day care teachers are wildly underpaid. It’s actually kind of appalling how underpaid they are.

Nanny

During my first college attempt, after a phone survey job, I was a nanny for a family friend for about six months. I watched the kids after school and a weekend night. I had use of a car to pick them up from school, and I did some light house keeping. The two main things I took away from it was an intimate glimpse into a family (affluent, indulgent, a bit divided) much different than mine had been and a taste of having total trust invested in me really without much cause. It was . . . interesting.

Dietary Aide

My first job at age 15 was working in the dining room of an assisted living facility. Larger facilities have multiple aids during meals, but I had to serve meals and close the dining room down alone at night. Food service is such a great field for learning hard work and workplace politics—I think I’d recommend it to a kid over retail.

Selling Newspapers, Building Classic Cars

I was at each of these jobs two weeks or less and didn’t bother to give real notice for either one (I was eighteen): a crew of door-to-door newspaper salespeople and building fiberglass bodies for imitation classic cars. Both are terrible jobs. It may be that I am simply a fortunate person (well, I know that’s true, but not sure that it invalidates this insight), but what I learned is not to stay at a terrible job for ridiculous pay. There must be more to life than that.

How to Handle a Total Communication Breakdown

“Sometimes, nothing works. You say something, making all the proper moves, and nothing happens. You get an icy silence, a blank look, folded arms. You try another move—you try Leveling, perhaps. And still nothing happens.”

This is a quote from the “Emergency Techniques” chapter of Suzette Haden Elgin’s book, The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense, the 2009 edition. In fact, the title of this post is a heading from a section in that chapter on coming to a standstill in a negotiation.

“What this means is that you are lacking some vital piece of information. You have broken a rule you know nothing about, perhaps because the other person is from a different cultural group than you are, perhaps for entirely personal reasons.”

The book describes verbal attack patterns and modes. Leveler mode, in which what the speaker says is what the speaker feels, is the ideal communication mode, but is often not safe or appropriate. For one thing, it can seem like an attack to some people. “This article is not well written” is a straightforward assertion in Leveler mode. It’s not necessarily a verbal attack if spoken in a neutral tone.

The safest mode is Computer mode; using abstract, controlled, and noncommittal speech and body language.

Here’s a paragraph in Computer mode: It’s interesting that people feel the need for a book on defending themselves in conversation. It can be stressful to have a confrontation. It would seem that it’s possible to disguise a verbal attack as friendly banter. There are statistics suggesting that these situations are possibly detrimental to people’s health.

Computer mode is deliberately passive, and should probably be even less substantive than the paragraph above, if I have read the book correctly. This mode of speech can be used to stall unwanted conversations and to diffuse tension. The point of verbal self defense, as described by Elgin, is not to smack down your opponent with your wit and sharp tongue, but to avoid verbal violence and get to Leveler mode when possible. As in martial arts, we should only use the necessary amount of force, and no more.

“In this situation you have only one appropriate response: You become absolutely silent, too. And you wait.”

I read the entire book waiting to encounter information on gossip and sarcasm, but I’m pretty sure neither word appears in the text. There was quite a bit of advice about avoiding verbal retaliation, and feeding into a confrontation. I think the gist is that we shouldn’t feed the trolls IRL any more than we should online.

“If this happens to you in a situation in where you are facing a group and you have a responsibility to fulfill . . . be sure that you make your position clear before you resort to silence.”

I’ve got more appreciation now for spoken rhetoric. It’s a skill to be honed. I love the idea that once I am proficient at it I will be confident enough to diffuse attacks and hostility without having to retaliate, and without fear that I am being taken advantage of. And now I have shared one of Elgin’s emergency techniques with you.