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Getting things done without doing everything yourself

Yesterday, a friend of mine and I had an interesting conversation, during which we pondered some ideas that we could all learn from. He is a very successful business manager at Hewlett-Packard, thanks to an unfair number of qualities that we will not share here. He is a an achiever. He gets things done. Done right. The first time. On time!

In his success though, some might qualify him as “pushy”. He gets things done, yes. And to “get things done, done right, the first time, on time”, he will not hesitate to jump in and do things himself, to help his team. I have done the same, often, albeit with less success than him.

Still, recently, he has had some issues at home, where the entire family tends to rely on his extraordinary organization skills and energy to do anything from grocery to vacation preparation to spring cleaning. What had slowly become a set of simple but frustrating dependency relationships has recently evolved into open dissatisfaction and bitterness on both sides.

After discussing and going past the standard “It’s all her fault”, “I cannot tolerate blahblah…”, we had to go through the heart of the matter. His very success-driven, pushy, get things done attitude might be at the source of the issue. Let’s see how the dynamics operate: He asks for something to be done. Nobody does it. He insists, bugs, nags, explains, still nothing. He does it. Loop completed. What had to be done is done. Near-term, this can be seen as a success. But also people have received the message loud and clear: if they do not do it, he will. Long-term, this brings everyone one step farther from a positive dynamics in the family.

Summary: to get things done on a sustainable manner, you need to involve others in the doing. And since you cannot manipulate people into doing the things you want without hampering the relationship, you need to find another way. A powerful, indirect way is to manipulate the forces of the environment, so people want to to what you would hope for, because it is in their interest.

This thinking is not natural, but a regular practice will make you excellent at finding the forces that would entice the proper conduct, without making it a downright bribery.

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