Artistic Teaching

Any company that has been around for more than six or seven years has had to deal with changes in the technology stack. Naturally this has serious implications to the clerical staff: those that actually deal directly with the customers. Of course most successful companies hire employees who are quick to learn anyhow. Yet when you have major system wide changes, it is of tremendous help to have a couple folks on board who are both astute at learning on their own as well as at communicating to and teaching the new technology to others.

It takes a certain type of personality to be comfortable with teaching coworkers: this is not like an elementary school teacher nor even a college professor. To be effective the instructor needs to be comfortable enough in their own learning abilities to stay "ahead of the curve" and hence secure in their position.

They need to possess patience for those who are slower to grasp new concepts, and yet appreciate the effort their fellow employees are making, and have a means to be continually encouraging. Companies that have found the keys to long term survival have also found how to keep their internal "teachers" engaged and on board.

Artful Champions

There's an old saying, "every social war is a battle between the very few on both sides who care and who fire their shots across a crowd of spectators." Analysis is very much like that. You have perhaps two or three managers who have different opinions about what your objectives should be, and a couple large groups of customers who care in the collective sense, but who individually just view your project with the valid skepticism of the small part it plays in their lives.

To really nail down the ethos, and for a large project to succeed, you need to have (or manufacture) a champion for each of the user, customer, and business interest groups. These champions needs to sincerely stand up for the benefits and beliefs of their group, and be gregarious enough to express them.

As you cycle through the balance points you then build up goodwill amongst the champions, and this enables you to negotiate concordance on the more difficult decisions.

This can be an especially hard sell: first, when a champion is less than sincere in standing up for their group. Secondly, when a champion changes employment, through their own choice or otherwise. And thirdly, when you can't get sufficient permanent heavy artillery support from a senior manager to resolve those instances where negotiations fail.

A solid 25% of full-metal Analysis involves the psychic steps to avoid these three pitfalls.

Artful Coworkers

Employees may spend a fair amount of effort (especially in larger corporations where you find a concentration of regulatory specialists) mining the veins of gold sequestered away between the seams of operations and regulations. Sometimes this is explicitly an objective of management, at other times it is an implicit cultural undercurrent.

How you approach and handle this probably is more influenced by your ethos and personal beliefs than any of your other working relationships.

Society's regulations have both a written and an intentional form; the two are similar but not the same. To me, the intent of the law carries more weight than the letter of the law. You or your coworkers may disagree with the intent of the law, but unless you have a very clear and deep understanding of how the law came about you run a serious risk if violating its intent.

Resolving differences of opinion on this matter should be one of the first things you do before starting any large project that has a potential to move any boundary that affects this balance.

A full 65 to 75 percent of the politics of analysis happens on the boundary between employees and customers. Their interests are misaligned in any business because the distribution of profit margins either goes to one (in the form of wages) or to the other (in the form of competitive pricing). And you are developing a project that will impact sales or profit margin, because otherwise you wouldn't be working on it.

How this boundary moves however is none of your business, it is beyond your concern. Yet at the same time your analysis will sink into the mucky depths of oblivion unless you manage the politics of this boundary to appeal to both sides.

To the employees you must present an image that your creation will make their life easier without jeopardizing their jobs. To the customers (vis a vis the management) you need to present an end point that affords them greater efficiencies and value for their dollar. You may be unable to guarantee that you can sufficiently meet both targets, but it should be your objective nevertheless.