Disease of unpreparedness

There are multiple biases that we meet everyday. There are people who study it and spend years and lives on understand mechanism and reasons behind that. There are people searching and learning about these biases and quirks to avoid them. Personally overgrowing and consciously arranging their minds.

There is another type of people - those who rushes into unknown and ignores all the knowledge and experience of other people. These are doers and they allow many things to born and appear in this world, but they are also shaping our daily life. Unluckily not always the best way.

Epidemic of do first - think later

It became a motto of modern world - rush into doing, deliver, show the world what you got.Once it gets traction and love from the outer world - then you should think how to deal with that. It wouldn’t be a problem if the world would consist of people similar to me. People who dig deep, who are eager to learn, reflecting and overthinking. This is amazing advice that prevent standstill and paralysis due to perfectionism.

Luckily there are other people. That may prefer this suggestion over anything else. They collect power and impact through the years without pausing to think and analyze. This becomes a source of dumb decisions, that wastes time, resources and lives.

This leads to scenarios, where all the impulses are released to the world. It is not bad per se. However, without a clear message, good communication and above average leadership skills these actions brings chaos instead of innovation.

It’s almost great

This is the most frustrated moment. Getting a task, whatever form it takes, doing great job and delivering results that are working well. What could be better? Well, actually...

Actually we’ve shared outdated requirements for the features, 3 minutes ago we’ve decided to do a rebranding with complete color change and now primary localization should be Chinese. I bet whatever industry you’re working at you got the hyperbole here.

While I totally get the fact world changes even when we don’t want it to happen - complete unpreparedness that is tried to be sold as creativity or agile or any other buzz-word is driving me crazy. It is insane how many people try to pretend they are leader or managers, gather certificates, years of experience and titles. And are not able to define the expectations of the effort they delegate.

Chaos pays off

Many times I’ve seen and experience people who were not able to clearly communicate their needs. While I feel sorry for those who are fighting these problem (just like me), I believe this is a screaming sign of incompetence on any leadership role.

The problem lays much deeper than personal problems translated to the professional life. The problem is everyone’s hungry for success. What is success? For this type of people it’s achieving the results. Results, that we are proud of. How we do that if we can’t manage people well? We have to manipulate. That’s also the tool of influence on others people actions and decisions. It end up purely. As soon as that’s multiplied by the power it creates a toxic environment, where good ideas are burried in chaos and fear.

But this keeps the wagon driving. Most of the power nowadays comes from the money. As soon as we can pay - we can ensure power over others. And earn more. Staying at such toxic places is not a sign of high tolerance. It is a sign of not being serious about our own lives and entire society we’re living at. Leaving such places is not an act of protest. It is an act of self-love and a part of real-life feedback everyone’s screaming they are looking for.

Why it matters

I’ve spent years in such environments. I’ve learned how disfunctional teams and relationships are working. How these are harming people. Stopping from actually building great things. Prevent healthy information flow, that is a crucial factor in the era of information.

In last year we started to believe AI is the answer to everything: how do to more in less time, earn more, become happier, live a better life. While teams are spending budgets on AI integration hoping for productivity increase in reality their calendars are full, stress is maximized, channels and chat spawns endlessly. While vision, goal and plans are dreams in someone’s head and empty promises are given instead. It is called modern environment starving for goal oriented team mates at the end of the day.

I believe we can do better. I hope there are teams and entire companies who does differently. I don’t have illusions here - it’s undoubtedly on me I’m not a part of it.

I’m on my way.