People will not listen to a nobody
Have you ever been in a situation where you voiced out your opinions to your seniors, only to be regarded as lies or bullshit? The worse thing is, when someone who has is more experienced than you came along with exactly the same opinion, your seniors would believe him!
What kind of nonsense is this? This is called the “don’t talk to me unless you are more qualified than me” syndrome which, sadly, is suffered by many people on Earth.
To be honest, I don’t really blame people who have this kind of syndrome or mentality because there are just too many news, facts, “facts” flying around in our life every single day. If people were to believe in everything, time will never be enough and …well…I think they will go crazy due to excessive information.
I think this boy is not qualified enough to tell people about birdwatching
This kind of syndrome will be even more obvious on someone if that someone is paying for this particular “fact”. Nobody wants to pay for something which is not right or not trustworthy. That’s why businesses are willing to spend thousands and millions of dollars on qualified consultants and experts. Why? Not because they’re smarter or have higher IQs or are more experienced, but because they are regarded to be more “qualified”.
So the next time you want to talk or convince somebody, look at your own situation. Are you qualified enough to talk to the person? Will the person actually listen to you or will he just treat you as an idiot? Think about it and decide whether you really want to talk to the person.
There’s no harm trying but when there are a lot of potential people you can talk to…..you really need to filter and pick only those who will listen to you. You can’t spend too much time on idiots who think you’re more idiotic than them.
p/s…. there are also some people who can be very convincing without the proper qualifications. Those people rely on their reputation. Maybe you can be like them too?
I can share with u my experience when I finally understood why a board of directors will adopt a consultant’s recomendation but not an employee’s recommendation of the same.
If the project takes off and falls apart, the board can say to the shareholders, “We got the best brains in the market to advise us on this but they misled us. Its their fault. We can withhold their payment.”
On the other hand, if it was an employee’s recommendation that bombed, they cannot escape. The shareholders will hammer them for making a bad decision and demand why didn’t they get a proper consultant’s view.
This sort of logic is notorious among banks who quickly learn that consultants make great human shields, especially with the hawks and regulators on their backs. Quite frankly, many consultants are paid to cover people’s asses, not so much to bring anything new (although to be fair, some do). And for enough money, most of them are happy to do it.
Damien Tan
13 Feb 09 at 12:21 pm
I totally agree with Damien. They want someone to make decisions and take the blame when things don’t work out.
Similarly, senior executives will not listen to junior executives because when things go wrong, the person who makes the decision (senior executive) has to take the rap.
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The Malaysian Life
13 Feb 09 at 2:52 pm
Yep, agree with what Damien & The Malaysian Life said.
Perhaps it’s like getting a “2nd opinion” from a consultant, where if anything were to happen, it was the consultant’s fault. Also, some management would ask, “can we run this by an expert” for fear of making a mistake.
I’d guess to learn the “art of persuasion” would help but ultimately, it lies with management on whom should they trust to listen to.
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Angie Tan
13 Feb 09 at 8:28 pm
@ Damien
Or maybe, its not scapegoat but more like they are not feeling confident enuf with their own people. This is always the case. They (the bosses n shareholders) always think that the best people will not come within their company.
So in the end, they’re just paying for expensive scapegoats
But maybe they should try to read more n realize that most of the successful CEOs are from within the company.
So in this case, any words coming from their own people will be regarded as not so good…but words coming from expensive consultants will be useful. After all, they’ve “tried” their best by paying for the best.
@ The Malaysian Life
Sadly but this is true. Most seniors don’t listen to juniors because if the ideas (fr the juniors) go wrong…who is there to cover their asses? The seniors have to do it themselves. Might as well they rely on themselves from the beginning.
But closing yourselves off from ideas from other people is not always a good thing to do.
@ Angie
Persuasion does help but status and ‘reputation’ will be the deciding factor whether the shareholders/bosses will call upon your service
Alvin Lim
14 Feb 09 at 3:28 am
As usual, I often like to study the root of problems I run into.
IMO, a company that likes to stress on the apportionment of blame will suffer this cover-your-ass disease the most. This culture is brought in by managers who are conditioned by a f*ed up childhood, where punishment was often the only means of behavior control. I have always contended that the psychosis of the workplace is rooted in the psychosis of unhappy childhoods. And the worse thing is, its almost impossible to change people once they’ve decided that finding blame is the way to handle life’s problems, as they may’ve been trained to do when they were a child.
I believe corporate culture, that layer where all workplace diseases come from, is often left unmanaged by the people whose job is to manage it – human resources. Good HRs use tools to assess the mental state of incoming candidates. If a questionable mindset is detected, they are supposed to keep them out no matter how good they appear on paper. The logic being its far cheaper and faster to work with a bunch of healthy-minded people than to let in the silent psychos, let them spread discontent till it explodes and then spend money on replacements and repair.
Sadly, most local HRs won’t touch this with a 10 foot pole. They are content at managing leave, claims, payroll, clerical stuff like that. Anything except manage human resource.
Take a look at companies with the kind of problems you described. Chances are you’ll find weak HRs.
(Damn, I must learn to make shorter comments. Sorry about that.
)
Damien Tan
14 Feb 09 at 9:27 am
@ Damien
LOL, thanks for replying such a lengthy comment but no apologies needed since i prefer long comment. Hahah. Can learn from you more that way
Actually, few of my good friends are in the HR and for them not touching the ‘sensitive HR selection issue’, sometimes, you can’t blame them. It’s the bosses who defined their roles and most of the bosses do not expect these HR executives to do the right HR work – to hire the right person (in terms of skill and personality).
What these bosses do is to engage recruitment agencies……(which are not really doing well lately due to the competition, and most are not giving the right candidates), or to give the HR a piece of paper with all the required skills and tell the HR they (the bosses) need these people within 1 month’s time.
Imagine that, and multiply by 10 bosses. If the company is not willing to pay for those personality tests……no way the HR can filter by themselves as it’ll take up too much time (and with that 1 month timeline…i doubt they can achieve it).
Anyway………….we went out of topic.
Guess I’ll try to write a post on this. LOL.
Alvin Lim
14 Feb 09 at 11:39 am