Everyone gets frustrated at work. We bottle it up and tend to point fingers at the front-line of that frustration. Whether that be the people in front of us or the direct project on our screen.
Quickly, take these 3 steps:
Relax, it's work.
Remember that nobody is trying to deliberately frustrate you
Diagnose your frustration
1 & 2 are straightforward, and if you are unable to shake them I recommend thinking about the work culture you've joined and rethink if that's the type of company you want to be a part of.
Today, we're going to dive into #3 - Diagnose your frustration
As we naturally stare at the front-line of our irritation, we need to peak around the corner and understand the environment that is creating that annoyance. I tend to break it down into these 4 quadrants:
#1: Who is involved?
What is the structure around your frustration? Map out the organizational structure and highlight the department, teams, and individuals involved in your frustration. This creates a more holistic view that identifies the stakeholders involved. For example, if you are frustrated with certain teams in a project, you can diagnosis that team to see who reports to who to further understand the team’s decision-making process.
#2: What do they value?
At each layer, document the values or culture that is lived by the department, teams, or individuals. What do they deeply care about? How do they treat each other? How does that influence their behavior? Understanding the culture and values allows you to be more approachable when constructing feedback or collaborating.
#3: What are their responsibilities?
Diving further into these layers, document their roles and responsibilities. What are they accountable to? How does that influence their decision making or way of thinking about problems? Not only do they care about your problem, but they also have to worry about X, Y, & Z. This builds empathy with the department, team, or individual and gives you the context you need to build bridges.
#4: How do they work?
How do these departments/teams/individuals work? Understanding how they prioritize and execute work will give you a better understanding of how to complement or challenge that process and come to a preferable solution.
Once you’ve filled out these quadrants, diagnose yourself!
Once done, start diagnosing the problem! Identify the patterns or constraints within these quadrants, document, and begin planning.
This process stops you from quickly reacting to what's in front. Instead, you gain a proper understanding of the environment and start thinking about your frustration in the right way.
Examples:
My responsibilities seem to directly crossover with team X. Why? How do we split up the work and create the right role definitions here?
A lot of the people I work with on this project report into {NAME}, but I don't have a relationship with that individual.
That team has a lot more responsibilities to balance, that must be why they run the process the way they do. How can I get better expectations of what they can commit to on a weekly basis?
This team values the speed of execution, while I am responsible for quality assurance. What does this project require? How can we create shared values or guiding principles for this project?
This simple framework diagnoses problems. In addition, use this framework to look at opportunities or forward-thinking decisions to properly understand all the elements at play.
Simply put, understand the environment you are working in. That environment constantly changes and it's important to recalibrate and build the right relationships needed to succeed.