The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
While I don't think you need to change your attitude, I think it's helpful to understand that people rarely change their behaviour without there being some consequences or outside force that makes them do so.
There will always be Bob's in the world. Currently he's incentivised to continue his behaviour. Your boss's job is to make sure the work gets done. If your boss does not think their will be consequences for himself (such as being understaffed) he is limited in how much he will push Bob.
I'd look for other positions. I wouldn't tell your boss what you're doing or try to leverage 'if things don't change, I'll quit!'. I'd just quietly look for a better place for yourself that aligns with your own temperament (eg a job that doesn't force you to pick up other's slack in order to be diligent). It could be inside the same organisation or it could be somewhere new. Consider not taking roles where you are responsible for joint output and look for ones where you have your own deliverables that don't require other's input.
I'm dealing with a similar thing second hand right now with a close friend who has stakeholders in her job role that are blocking her from making changes to make her company more profitable. To do what she wants means more work for the blockers who are solely concerned with doing to bare minimum to meet their KPI's. They don't care about the company at all. Big agent/principal problem. Management are very slow to figure out the misaligned incentives, so my friend has to waste an unknown amount of time watching the blockers make excuses in meetings for why they don't want to find ways to make more profit until management figures it out. My friend has not surprisingly started looking for a new job in her spare time.
I strongly agree with your "people rarely change" statement and that's the attitude I have. I have tried to change the incentive structure for Bob by highlighting his massive shortcomings to Charlie, but to no avail as stated. I'll continue to brainstorm other ways.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link