Meets tight deadlines at a single bound

One requirement that seems almost to write itself into all unsuspecting Job Descriptions is "The Ability to Meet Tight Deadlines"

Unsurprisingly, in response, candidates for jobs are universally compelled to guarantee that they can do this. Some probably can.

But why should a job require people to be facing tight deadlines routinely? Yes, some jobs, such as ambulance driver, really do require things to be done quickly at short notice. Yes, most jobs would expect occasionally to have urgent situations requiring 'all hands on deck'. Reasonable people respond positively to occasional short term crises where they work. It would seem unnecessary to have to contract them to do so.

For it be necessary to specify that an essential and every day aspect of a job is meeting tight deadlines suggests that there may actually be a serious problem in the workplace. 

Is the author of the Job Description really admitting that they are incapable of managing workflow?  Or worse, that they cannot be bothered to manage workflow?

Actually achieving deadlines at short notice does not necessarily benefit the person concerned. In fact, it can have serious disadvantages in that it can train the person's manager to present requests at short notice increasingly. 

In order to train your manager to manage their own workflow better, it may be beneficial to fail to meet tight deadlines. But this approach obviously has high risk. A better solution might be to develop a 'deadline audit tool' which would be used whenever an agreed threshold of 'deadline tightness' was reached. 

Such a tool employed routinely across an organisation would expose, and thereby quickly eliminate, the problems in workflow management. For example, those situations where a task presented to one person with a "by tomorrow without fail" timescale had actually been sitting on the another's desk for the previous six weeks. 

Edgar Bolton. 2013

Why do we measure experience in years?

Many years ago a friend and I were discussing a rather pompous mutual acquaintance who was always referring to the fact that he had thirty years experience in (whatever it was - I forget).

My friend asked "Has he got 30 years experience or has he got one year's experience 30 times?"

Once I had got over my initial envy at not being the originator of this amusing insight, I started thinking. Recruitment processes typically ask for, say, five years experience in a particular area. But most people recognise that learning does not simply increase proportionally with time. The ubiquitous "steep learning curve" that many of us anticipate travelling up indicates this: 

The amount we learn in the last of five years is unlikely be the same as we learn in the first of five years. It is probably going to be considerably less. Certainly from my own experience, I would estimate I learn most in the first 3-6 months.

So what does "five years experience" really mean? And how many years is it before the increasing number starts to have a negative connotation? Is five years in the same role two years too many?

Edgar Bolton 2013

“Lessons have been learned”

The short statement “lessons have been learned” is capable of a multitude of uses. It is particularly useful when people want to create the impression of an apology or acknowledgement without actually apologising or admitting anything.

Delivered with the merest hint  of contrition, the statement sounds like an acknowledgement of responsibility for something that has been done badly.

Be careful not to get taken in by this. The choice of language may be very deliberate. The only lesson the person speaking might actually have learned is “next time don’t get caught!”

If you find yourself in a situation where somebody comes out with the statement “Lessons have been learned”, it may be worth asking them “What lessons have been learned, by whom, and how were these lessons disseminated?”

Edgar Bolton. 2013

What is a Green Herring?

A "red herring" is a false trail, an idea which turns out to be not relevant to the question being pursued.

The opposite of a "red herring" is a "green herring".

A "green herring" is something encountered which does not seem relevant but which turns out to be useful later.

Edgar Bolton. 2013