It’s not unusual for your boss to give you a job that is horizontal and involves other people over a long period of time. Encounter such a thing, many people blindly bury their heads in the sand, especially as a frontline soldier, without people, you need a certain way to get things done.

Take a chestnut

Xiao Ming is a new employee this year and has more than five years of work experience. He has been working on business requirements for a period of time. Today, the boss gave him one thing, which is to push everyone to improve the document of project code, so that the new team members can understand the project code more quickly. A lot of programmers don’t like to document, especially if they take the initiative to update documentation after a project changes. As a newcomer, Xiao Ming found many problems during his time in the team. Many of them were solved by asking other elderly people, and some of them were difficult. Which is why he’s the best person to do it.

His boss asked him to compile a standardized document template for everyone to use. After two days, Because Xiaoming was busy with business and did not take care of this matter, he had been thinking of working overtime on weekends. After four days, Xiaoming finally sorted out a template document and put it in his own document space, but he did not send it to the boss. The matter was forgotten later. After a week, the boss asked how the matter was done. Xiao Ming said that the document was finished, but there should be a lot of imperfections. So in the weekly meeting, we put forward some suggestions, the most important thing is to put some public parts, in a separate document detailing, other project documents to reference him. These common parts may include how scaffolding is used, how internationalization is done, and so on.

Time passed another week, the boss asked Xiao Ming about the progress of things, he said he was writing international documents.

We see the above case, what problems did Xiao Ming expose?

What is reliable?

When we are doing things, we may want to leave a reliable impression on others, so we habitually accept rather than reject. Think you must do it, only do it is the only result of this matter. If you haven’t done it, you don’t get any feedback, because feedback makes you feel bad about yourself because you haven’t done it. But in fact, in all of this, we are missing an important question, which is what is reliable?

It’s not saying no, it’s doing what it says. Being reliable is actually doing what you can, doing what you can be sure of, and giving positive feedback even if you don’t finish it in the expected time. The so-called ** “**** everything has an explanation, every piece has a fall, everything has an echo”. Do give positive feedback when you promise something to others. The frequency can be every day, every two days. Remember not to waste time, keep silent, wait for the result to feedback, and do not save a surprise to the boss. Because such surprise is often a scare, because every feedback and communication is a process of focus, can ensure that the whole thing will not be distorted, in line with the original expectation.

In the above example, Xiao Ming had such a problem. First, there was no positive feedback. Even though he was busy with other urgent things and had no time to do them, he still told his boss that he was busy with other things and he might not have time to do the things you told me. Two is always thinking about finish again, oneself work overtime more to make up for, and these hard work, just in the pain of their own, and can not change the result of things and others to your impression.

What is your business?

Is it your business when you have willingly consented to do it yourself? That’s not the case, because you may not have the time to do it and then transfer it to someone else, or you may ask someone else to do it for you and someone else does most of it and someone else ends up taking it. More often than not, you don’t get results and things get delayed. So the only thing that matters to you is “did you set it up?” 台湾国

We often hear that Deng Xiaoping is the chief architect of China’s reform and opening up, so when we talk about reform and opening up, we have to mention Deng Xiaoping, and there are many other people who did a lot of things, but we don’t have much impression. Designers are not necessarily promoters or founders, as we see in the business society, founders are often not easy to stick to the end and get the ultimate maximum results. So, whether it’s something your boss arranges for you to do, something you initiate yourself, or even something someone else does, as long as you design it, it’s yours.

How to design something?

Design is not a simple thing, he needs more in-depth thinking, not simply hard work, is to stand higher, see the overall situation, see the periphery, figure out the main line, determine the key, organize the crowd, solve the problem, control the pace, get the result. Take the example of Xiao Ming above, let’s break down this problem in detail. How to improve the documentation for each project? We may have to answer a few questions first:

1. What is the purpose of doing this?

Finishing the core aim of the document must have a novice easier to understand the current project, so content must be full, and to combine the use of their feelings, the document also contains the main content and the expansion of reading, the main content is a novice can completely according to the process operation, can use the project, there are still some concept extension reading is introduced, the extension of knowledge, not the digestion, I looked at it slowly.

Maybe the above is only superficial or important and obvious purpose, everything others ask you to do, in fact, is a good opportunity to exercise themselves, to show their ability. So don’t rush it, or take it lightly, or think of it as a physical chore. Thinking first, you will feel that it does not take much of your time. When you’ve thought things through, from the big picture down to the small details, you’ll feel at ease with the sense of control that comes naturally.

Therefore, the purpose of analysis should look at two aspects, one is superficial obvious, the other is self-growth related. These two aspects are enough. Remember not to think too much, not to speculate too much, and not to sublimate a trivial matter to the height of interpersonal struggle and the nature of the universe. Then you will get tired.

2. How many steps does it take?

How many steps are there to refrigerate an elephant? Three steps, open the refrigerator door, put the elephant in, close the refrigerator door. What everyone thought was a joke turned out to be the key to solving the problem. Many people have the habit of immediately focusing on the most difficult part of a problem, thinking about how to solve the most difficult part, and then failing to take action for a long time. Step thinking, on the other hand, not only gives us a feasible way to solve a problem, it also gets us into action.

To solve Xiao Ming’s problem, we need to look at the following steps:

  • Scope: Know how many items there are and draw a table.
  • Key content: When writing a project document, determine what is core content and what is extended reading. List the core content outline and extended reading document table of contents.
  • Organizing the masses: this kind of thing must not think of their own a person to do, especially as a new person, has a unique advantage, ask colleagues and ask for help, will get a very friendly response. In the document, you can write the parts you are familiar with by yourself, and initialize the parts you are not familiar with and ask your colleagues to supplement them, or ask your colleagues to supplement them by yourself. You may find that you already have a lot of documentation, but it’s just not organized properly.
  • Provide tools: a tool in the process of problem solving, thinking is very important, if you want to let others to help you, you must have tool for others, as far as possible let him not how to think can help you to solve the problem, only do the labor intensive, such a thing a man can do is very time consuming, more people will be soon. The tools you provide are like an assembly line. Think of your colleagues as assembly line workers. Once the machine starts up, they sit back and wait for the product to come out. So for each project to perfect the above documents, you can sort out a general template first, then make the differences of each project into parameter inserted, you can do a form page collection of these parameters, or use the command line tools, adopt the way of question and answer to collect parameters, finally the automated synthesis good documentation submitted to the project in the ReadMe.
  • Check progress: This step is discussed below.
  • Show results: Finish what you started and present the final results at the weekly team meeting.

3. How to track progress?

As long as many people work, there will be do fast, do slow, and do not do at all. You need a mechanism or tool to Check progress. Looking at Ming’s question above, we can produce a progress chart, and the progress chart should also be very careful, covering every key point to do a thing, also known as checkpoints, checkpoints are guidelines for action, but also indicators to judge the completion of the result. Each line will specify which project, what address, who will be responsible for it, whether it will be completed, and what difficulties it will have. Then embed this form into the team’s collective workflow, such as making progress at weekly team meetings, or setting up daily reminders, or summarizing progress every two days to the group. Regular reminder and exposure of problems is an effective way to push things forward, and of course can reward students who finish quickly. There are many methods, but the key is to establish an automatic mechanism.

4. What is the final output?

With the final output, there is a result of the matter. Again, we have to look at two aspects. One is the superficial result. In Ming’s case, each project has a complete ReadMe document. But there is also a legacy of tools and methodologies, such as a set of commands to automate document generation, that can provide a faster way to initialize documents for later projects. Of course, you don’t have to settle for the sake of settling. You have to come up with a reusable wheel. In fact, the improvement of your own growth is also a good potential result.

Finally, I want to show the output, to draw a perfect end to this matter, thank my classmates for helping me, and get the result.

conclusion

Everyone is doing things, the same thing you do, and others to do what will be different. Do the things you do have your imprint on them, and do you influence your organization to make a difference? What I said above is the most basic way of doing things. It is a key factor to distinguish between dawdling and doing practical things. It is a magic weapon to change passive into active and an effective way to establish a growth personality. My humble opinion, I hope it will be helpful to you, and there will be an advanced chapter on how to build soil and make things happen naturally.