Expect the Unexpected

By Gururaj B.S.

“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect” is an Oscar Wilde’s adage that is not unheard of.

It is quite natural that our managers expect us to contribute to the organization beyond what is usually expected of us. Is that wrong? In my honest opinion, all managers are not bad. In this article, let us subject all managers and their expectations to theoretical analysis in order to rediscover the meaning of the trendy phrase, “managerial expectations.” I’m writing this article based on my own experience.

My opinions may change as and when my manager’s expectations change.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

• Team Conflict is Natural

• My Experience at the STC Conference

• Assembly Line Production in Technical Communication

• Effective Mailing List Participation

• Mentoring of a Junior Writer by a Senior Writer or a Lead

• Ask the Word Guru

The primary connotation of technical communication is “Excellence in Customer Experience.” This is aligned with the organizational plans as one of the key themes in the various facets of the business. To achieve excellence in the customer aspect of business, we need to focus on two communities of people: project teams and managers. People who belong to either of these factions need to ask themselves two important questions:

“How do I enhance the customer experience?” and

“What help or support do I require to achieve this?”

Our conviction has it that answers to these questions will serve as the catalysts to the process of producing breakthrough results in the organization with a fully empowered technical communication team. Nowadays, managers do not want us to meet their expectations; they want us to exceed their expectations. Whilst they set or change their expectations, let us identify a few ways of “managing our managers and their expectations.”

After a bit of rumination, I have come up with a few commandments for managing the expectations of our managers.

Assess your workload yourself. Come up with a good plan and roadmap for yourself. Confer with your manager to give your plan finishing touches.
Do not set unrealistic goals for yourself. Who knows you better than yourself?
Focus on your primary deliverables first. You can consider other things later.
Look at your documentation plans from a manager’s standpoint. Anyway, we are pretty good at switching roles. Aren’t we?
Try to investigate a problem from multifarious angles. Every problem has a solution; in fact, the problem will have more than one solution.
Do not define your boundaries. Be flexible.
Learn to accept and manage changes in your life as a technical communicator. When you set about making a change in yourself, you must have the intention to change. Importantly, you must have the additional bandwidth to implement a change in what you do. My manager keeps telling me that time is money. I keep wondering whether she is referring to her expensive watch.

As I said earlier, every problem has more than one solution. When you have many options to choose from, the decision tends to be harder. Let your mind make a conscious choice. It is not good to limit your possibilities.

Management, expectations, again… It’s promising to be a circle more vicious than the coagulation cascade, more so for green horns like us (coagulation cascade is a medical term. Thanks to a doctor who introduced this term to me. It is the process by which the blood clots in a series of steps. It so happens that in a particular condition, the process of clotting never stops. More and more of the meagre resources are spent for clotting, and ultimately, blood can no longer clot. It starts to bleed uncontrollably. A vicious cycle that’s very difficult to manage.) Do you guys believe in the truism that when your emotion reigns, the supreme logic falters? So, do not attach any emotion to your work. Your manager sets expectations; you meet them. Emotions are a notch lower in the ladder of evolution, a kind of melange of primal, baser instincts, arising out of such instincts. So, as we evolve, we tend to leave behind our emotions. Keep your cool even when you are under pressure. Apply your analytical abilities to find a solution that gets a considerable amount of primacy in your life as an instrument. Your manager will help you devise or identify this instrument; you must know how to put it into use.

Have you seen your 2^nd standard notebooks lately? If you do, you will find yourself thinking how you could have been so immature or undeveloped at that age. If you show a 2^nd standard kid a book on computers, he or she will think one of two things:

"What a load of monkey crap!"
Or
"What genius!"

Once the kid is at 5^th standard and has learnt the basics of computers, he or she will either think:

"It’s no big deal..."
Or
"What a pity I don’t know programming..."

My point is this:

Progress, development, or otherwise is:
          a) How far you can look into the future
          b) Your attitude (like how optimistic or pessimistic you are)
          c) Just your perception, which again depends on your attitude

There is no perfection in what you do. Perfection is again dependent on point (a) above. Because if you look a bit farther, you can improve further on what seems perfect for you and for your manager. In order for you to succeed as a technical writer, change your attitude with changing expectations. When pure intellect reigns supreme, you will realize then that a positive attitude is necessary to cope up with these changing expectations, to make your life easier, and to make your managers’ lives easier. Maybe, you will start searching for techniques to program a positive attitude into technical writers?

(Gururaj B.S. works for Hewlett-Packard, Bangalore. He is the Membership Manager of the STC India chapter, and also the owner of the Technical Writers of India (TWIN) list.)

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