People That Get It Done

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People That Get It Done

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Stephanie J Brown

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 9:37 AM

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Oh, and to answer Andy's question, YES, I'm a "get it done" employee, and my boss know it. At least, all indications are that several levels of management know that, because if it's on fire, it will likely land on my desk. And regardless of whether it's in my area or not, I'll figure out a way to either fix it, or get it in the hands of those who can fix it.

Knowing who to pull into a team to resolve a cross-functional issue is a handy skill to have... Wink

Here there be dragons...,

Steph Brown

Post #1223199

TravisDBA

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 10:11 AM

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Someone once complained to my boss about my personaility, and my bosses very quick response to that person was " I didn't hire Travis to win a personality contest here, I hired him because he is my "go to" guy and he keeps my multi-million dollar databases running smooth all the time. Anything else you need to discuss today?" Enough said. There are people who watch and complain and people who get stuff done. Where I work we have what is called the 20/80 rule. That is, 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work, while 80% of the people are setting around shooting the breeze, surfing the Internet, starting trouble, and being concerned with what other people's personalities are. Believe me, management is wise to them. BigGrin

"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ... BigGrin

Post #1223225

Mad Hacker

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 11:31 AM

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As working professionals, we should possess most, if not all, of the attributes referenced in the editorial. Unfortunately, in today's world that's just not the case.

I work in the public sector, and in our shop we've got some older employees that are nearing retirement age that regularly refuse to accept work assignements claiming they don't have the proper skillset, even after they've received thousands of dollars in training. These same employees rarely take initiative to better themselves, yet have no problem with receiving a programmer's rate of pay when pay day rolls around.

I made the mistake of complaining too loudly about a fellow employee that spent the majority of his time surfing the internet, reading the news paper and staring at the walls of his office, while i received most of the challenging work assignements, and actually received a reprimand from H.R. The sad thing is that these individuals are costing this origanization thousands of dollars every year when we already have financial issues, yet the managers take no initiative themselves to address these issues. Welcome to life in the sublic sector...

Post #1223260

mojootti

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 11:50 AM

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There is difference between "make is happen" and "MAKE IT HAPPEN". A manager that is trusting you to do your job and is encouraging OR is there to just to make his next bonus.

The doers do become the managers over time (which is a shame as one should be keeping the job he's good in) .

Post #1223273

Evil Kraig F

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 12:27 PM

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mojootti (12/16/2011)

Peter Principle in action.

- Craig Farrell

Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.

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Post #1223293

TravisDBA

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 1:07 PM

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Mad Hacker (12/16/2011)

The sad thing is that these individuals are costing this origanization thousands of dollars every year when we already have financial issues, yet the managers take no initiative themselves to address these issues. Welcome to life in the sublic sector...

No, welcome to world of "being scared to death of a lawsuit." It has literally paralyzed many organizations today. not to mention our government sectors. Sad but true, and people wondering why no one is buying American made products anymore, the unions and the lawsuits are driving their costs through the roof, meanwhile they have to put up with the deadwood because they are scared to death to fire them. So people starting buying everything from China, or export the jobs to there or India. It's a trickle down effect. BigGrin

"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ... BigGrin

Post #1223317

Stephanie J Brown

Posted Friday, December 16, 2011 8:01 PM

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TravisDBA (12/16/2011)... welcome to world of "being scared to death of a lawsuit." ... the unions and the lawsuits are driving their costs through the roof, meanwhile they have to put up with the deadwood ...

I have to disagree; I've not noticed union workers to be any more likely to "sluff off" than exempt workers, supervisors, or managers. In my experience, most managers do not know how to document a poorly-performing employee. Or work with one to improve their performance either. Sad in both cases.

I've experienced both having to deal with co-workers who refused to perform even their regular job duties, and having managers who tried to hold me to a different standard than my co-workers and team mates (not a Higher standard, mind you, just a different one). In all cases, these were resolved by appropriate action at the manager and the Human Resources level. I'm very good at documenting the realities of a situation - to the benefit of one manager, and the re-training of another (not sure how much they appreciated it at the time, but probably saved them a lawsuit later in life by nipping it in the bud, so to speak).

Proper documentation will head off most of the "frivolous" lawsuits - and that includes documenting the frustrations of an employees co-workers. Treating all employees with respect and fairness to start with will head off even more.

More companies ought to try that second one; it would save a lot of money in turnover rates - and THOSE carry a hefty price tag.

Here there be dragons...,

Steph Brown

Post #1223408

Andy Warren

Posted Saturday, December 17, 2011 6:19 AM

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Paul, yes, I do have a lawn guy Smile

, sort of - he cuts my grass once a week!

Andy
SQLShare - Learn One New Thing Each Day
SQLAndy - My Professional Blog
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Post #1223468

Andy Warren

Posted Saturday, December 17, 2011 6:23 AM

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The point about rewarding those that get it done is well taken. I'll admin to valueing the trait but also probably too much expecting it and not doing enough about those that don't get it done. No team will have all superstars. I think the one thing that the get it doners get is the chance to do the interesting stuff. Yes, that could be manager speak for the hard stuff, but it's also usually the stuff that builds skills and careers.

Andy
SQLShare - Learn One New Thing Each Day
SQLAndy - My Professional Blog
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Post #1223470

Jeff Moden

Posted Saturday, December 17, 2011 11:13 AM

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I absolutely agree with taking ownership of a problem. However...

The problem is that "people that make it happen" frequently aren't the "people that make it happen right". The article hints at that by talking a bit about people identifying when a project schedule is in jeapordy but I've found very few people that will actually bring up even important problems if they think it will be perceived as them causing a schedule problem. Because of that, the 4 things that suffer the most are proper design, performance/scalability, the amount of rework required, and readability/ease of modification of code which, of course, includes some embedded documentation.

As a side bar, there lately seems to be a rash of articles on this site about the general topic of people getting things done and meeting schedules. Nothing about getting things done right... nothing about the ridiculous expectations of some managers... nothing about ridiculously complex projects with short timelines spawned during a shared ride in an elevator... nothing about not killing the messenger... nothing about how where if you want it real bad, that's the way you'll normally get it... and nothing about the costs of rework because people were too busy getting it done instead of getting it done right.

Let's see something about the other side of the story and the real costs of putting something out that's bad simply because people rushed to meet a ridiculous schedule. Let's see something that talks about the real costs of rework and putting something wrong or non-scalable into the customers hands. Let's see something about the real costs of losing inhouse experts to another company because some manager is making promises to look good that his/her team has no chance of doing correctly and still meeting schedule without working 12 or 16 hours a day.

--Jeff Moden

"RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for "Row-By-Agonizing-Row".

First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
Stop thinking about what you want to do to a row... think, instead, of what you want to do to a column."

For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

For better answers on performance questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/

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