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Sayings of Chairman Walter
By Walter Hanig, President

Author Bio

Administrative Council

This month I'd like to share some simple advice I've learned, sometimes painfully, over my working life of nearly 30 years (gasp!). Not all are original, and I'm sure that some have been expressed more eloquently by others. These are tips I wish someone had shared with me when I first went to work after college. I certainly discussed them with my daughter early in her first postcollege job.

Don't read anything into the sequence.

• Don't let your boss get surprised. Consider the expectations others have of your boss. They expect her/him to know what's going on. And when she/he doesn't, they wonder what else she/he is unaware of. Moreover, by knowing about surprises (almost always unpleasant), the boss can work on get-well plans. Your best action is not only to alert your boss to the situation but also to have a proposed response.
  
  
• Find out your boss' job and help her/him do it. Not only will you make your boss' life easier (a fact that should come up during performance reviews), but you also demonstrate that you can substitute for the boss when needed.
  
  
• You have to do the job before you get promoted to it. Promotion of someone, particularly to positions with responsibility for people or products or profit/loss, is a risk to those making the promotion decision. The best predictor they have is, "Has the candidate done the job successfully before?"
  
  
• Laziness is the absent father of invention. Necessity may drive some inventions, but self-interest drives many, too. Any time you do something new, ask yourself if you're likely to need to repeat the process. If so, create a macro, develop a template, or otherwise make your future tasks easier. You may get to learn something new now, and you'll thank yourself in the future.
  
  
• If you need someone to know something, tell them! That is, don't depend on people who should be communicating to do so.
  
  
• More projects fail due to lack of calendar time than all other reasons combined (Bob Emerzian). In case of a crisis, you may be able to get more staff or reduce the requirements, but you cannot create time unless you slip the schedule. So, get as much done as soon as possible. If you finish early, I guarantee that new tasks (such as a better index) will be found to use the leftover time.
  

I have several more sayings that I'll expound on in a future article. In the meantime, what lessons do you wish you'd learned earlier?