Minute with Mandy

There are a lot of very important things that I will share with you in this book, but what I am about to share with you is one of the most important clerical lessons that I have learned.

Document everything. Save twice. Get it in writing.

I am obsessed with being organized so coming into my career, I thought I had this one in the bag. Man… was I wrong.

When it comes to business, a paper trail is everything. I can’t tell you how many times I fell on someone else’s sword because of a mistake or worse, I was fighting a battle for someone else and then couldn’t prove it was their battle.

Here are the top times that documentation is key:

• Timelines and Due Dates
• Professional Feedback / Constructive Criticism / Major Accomplishments
• Complications / Issues / Mistakes
• Vacation Time / Requests Off
• Behavior that seems “Sketchy”
  • I’m going to clue you in on something that you might not believe. When someone is acting “sketchy” it’s usually because they are doing something they shouldn’t be. Don’t get caught up in someone else’s lie. When I see something happening that doesn’t feel right I either loop in my supervisor or HR or if something just feels off, I make sure I document it in writing to someone above me that may have a better sense of what is going on. There have been so many times in my career where I thought that ignoring something would be enough to keep me out of someone else’s crazy antics, but in the end, because I witnessed the problem developing I typically got pulled into someone’s office to chat about the problem and ended up wasting more of my time than if I had just elevated the issue to begin with. I am by no means saying that you need to “tattletale” that is juvenile and not the right approach. What I am saying is that if someone is acting in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable it’s always a good idea to casually mention it to someone else who can address the issue in a professional way.
• Files or Corporate Assets
  • Audits happen all the time. People quit. Servers crash. If you are reading this sentence and don’t make a habit out of saving everything you touch to some sort of back-up system, then when you lose all your files, I will feel no remorse. I save everything in three places. In my email (I never delete anything), on my desktop and on the company’s server. I feel like this system is foolproof (I’m sure now that I put that in writing the cosmos are going to try to find a way to delete all my files). Plan for the worst. I had a co-worker that saved everything he touched on his desktop. One day on his way into work, he crashed his motorcycle and his work computer went flying. He lost everything (and to top it off had to pay to replace his work computer). It happens all the time. Accidents happened every day. People change positions and you have to do dig up files. Don’t be the person that makes the next person’s job a living hell because you never saved anything where it belonged.

Doing things differently can be a daunting task. For a lot of people, different equals bad. It’s the unknown.

It’s important to remember that it’s normal for people to resist change.

Sometimes though… different can be the best thing you will ever do.

When you try to do things a little differently it allows you to see new perspectives. Sometimes you will try something different and quickly realize that there was a reason it was done a certain way, to begin with, and guess what…that’s okay. It’s okay to try something new and fail. If everyone did everything the exact same since the beginning of time we would still be living in cold caves. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who enjoys living in a house with heat. Different is good. Different equals growth. Different equals opportunity.

I will say that there is a proper time and place for doing things differently. It truly is an art. You must ensure that you aren’t doing things different too often for then you might never actually get anything accomplished

You need to understand the motivation for doing something different. Are you trying something new because you’re giving a big old FU to the system? If so, I would recommend sticking to the plan. If you see that things can improve from trying something new, then it’s probably worth a shot.

You need to be realistic and set deadlines and goals to ensure that you don’t just keep trying to do something that isn’t working. You need parameters. You need to understand what it means to succeed and what it means to fail in this new environment.

The goal when you are doing something different should be to get better results that you have in your current situation.

There will be a lot of naysayers, it comes with the territory. Be prepared to state why you are doing what you are doing, absorb all perspectives and advice, don’t get defensive, and don’t feel like you are required to overexplain.

I am the kind of person that lets everyone speak their piece. I try not to shut anyone down. Everyone’s opinions are valuable and it’s important that everyone feels heard.

As I grew in my career, I realized that were certain folks that were put on this planet solely to make life miserable. I have met three of them in my career and I pray that I never have to work with another one, but the odds are not in my favor.

These are the people that don’t agree or like a single decision that you make, they are unhappy with their entire life (personal and professional), they are entitled but don’t want to put in the work and they make every single meeting and decision that they are involved in a special kind of hell.

I used to try to please these people and I hated every minute of it. I knew that if I didn’t learn how to shut them down politely, that I was going to explode (like the scene in Office Space where he smashes his computer).

I started to watch how some of the most senior folks I worked with dealt with these people and everyone handled it differently.

A gentle, stern, and polite “respectfully, I disagree” with a short follow-up on why will do.

 There will also be times in your career where you are right and they are wrong, and that’s okay you just have to learn how to address it.

You know the scene in mean girls where Cady hearing and Aaron are sitting in the math class and with each question that he answers you hear her say in her head “wrong”.

There have been so many times in my career when I have been sitting next to somebody in the exact same situation. I worked on the project and I am certain of the answers and someone who thinks they know it all is jumping to look like they did more than they did.

I used to let it go. I knew the right answer, they were wrong, and it would come back to bite them in the butt later. I didn’t have the courage to call them out in front of other people. Then I realized that by letting others provide incorrect information was just as bad. It can feel intimidating to speak up in a large meeting, but if incorrect information is being provided it should get addressed.