Work Proverbs

Now a philosopher I am most definitely not, but there are some phrases I've grown/taken-on over the years that I find helpful. They may well be twee and derivative, but I like them.

Phil

(Click on any proverb to expand some background text to it)

Actively seek out chances to give sincere positive feedback.

If you have a bad experience online, you may well leave a negative review, but how often do we take the time to give positive feedback that we really mean? To go up to someone whose just given a presentation and not just say you enjoyed it, but why you enjoyed it. To be on the look out for times to give positive feedback both to our peers, but also those above and below us in a work setting.

We want our interactions with people to be, on average, massively positive and encouraging. However there are always times when hard truths have to be said, so we can either avoid the hard conversations to keep relationships positive, or we can seek to accrue positive interactions with as many people as we can as often as we can. Plus most of the time it makes you and them feel great.
Make sure everyone knows that everyone knows.

This one is about team dynamics and how much cognitive overhead can be spent about what we can say to whom. I've been in work settings where everyone knew a piece of information, say for example the company hasn't had a good quarter, but no-one is sure who knows so they're guarded with the information so as to not upset anyone.

Now say in this example that a manager at an all-hands meeting says "now I know that last quarter wasn't as good as we had hoped", then in one sentence not only does everyone know, but crucially everyone knows that everyone knows. Suddenly brain cycles aren't wasted on who-knows-what, and more than that permission is implicitly given that it's ok to talk about it, promoting good open team dynamics.

Clearly it isn't always possible or right to widely share every piece of information, but be challenging yourself and your team to share more than they currently are, it's your secret productivity weapon, see also "Say the unsaid thing".
What's the thing on your to-do list you least want to do? Do that next.
Mike Adam

Full confession: this one doesn't get easier with time, but it is one of the best on the list. We put off doing the hard tasks but really they eat away at us from the back of our consciousnesses. Whereas if we straight-away attack the thing we least want to do, then we often find it wasn't quite as bad as we feared, and then our next task (obviously the 2nd worst one given the reapplication of the rule) won't be as bad and we're on an upward trajectory.

Try it for a fortnight. Go on. I dare you.
A 'quick no' is the 2nd best answer.
Ed Victor (via Nigela Lawson)

Yes, one of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard is from a TV chef.

But when confronted with a request, genuinely consider if you have the time and capacity. And if you're not sure, remember that a 'quick no' is the 2nd best answer. So often I don't respond, or put off responding, to a request because I want to say 'yes' but really deep down know I don't have the availability, so I end up delaying the process making me feel bad and preventing the other person from moving on and finding someone else for the task/role/etc. At work my colleagues are now pretty used to replies from me that read "I'm sorry but I have to give you the second best answer: a quick no."

It also helps with framing when you yourself receive a no: did the person get back to you quickly? Ok, well at least it's the 2nd best answer and I can now move on without wasting more time on this project/request/etc.
The best time to do something may have passed, but the second best time is now.

I've heard this one come up in a few contexts, and it seems Zig Ziglar coined a similar phrase, but I first heard it about investing: 'the best time to invest was 10 years ago, the second best time is now' about the affect of compounding. However it also comes up in the energy sector: 'the best time to invest in [green energy/nuclear/stationary storage/etc] was 5 years ago, the second best time...', as well as others and over time I've found it can apply more generally to the day-to-day of life.

There are always those things we're behind on, and we feel on some level guilty for: catching up with a friend, or engaging in a tough conversation, or just a re-painting a stain on a wall; something that we think 'if I'd done that X ago it would have been so much better' and the weight of that pushes us to not do the thing: the friend might be annoyed we haven't been in contact, or the situation might get worse as the conversation wasn't had immediately, or the stain might now be engrained and harder to shift. And so the longer something has been left, the more it pushes us to leave it just that bit longer. This proverb is about noticing that impulse, recognising it for what it is, and deciding that although it may well be true that you might have missed the best time to do something, the second best time is available to you and you should take it.
💃 If you liked it then you shoulda put a test on it. 💃
Dave Cheney

I've allowed myself one purely coding proverb on this list. But I think this pithy statement is memorable and accurate: Tests are about encoding behaviour, locking it in and protecting it in future changes, be that error handling, functionality, or even failure modes.
Over-communicating beats under-communicating.

I could have also phrased this as the more punchy: "Fact: you're not communicating enough with your team", as it is invariably true. Especially around things that are being deeply discussed in one context, the people in this context become exposure blind to the topic and so subconsciously assume everyone is aware of the latest developments. This xkcd sums it up nicely

There are a number of practical steps you can take on this, but I would say the most important is cultivating an environment where all questions are welcome. As you will likely not be aware that you haven't shared recently on topic X, due to exposure blindness, so you can make meeting notes available and other positive things, but often just letting people ask you the questions and answering as honestly as you have liberty to means that you get the good without the admin overhead.
Say the unsaid thing.

In a way this is the other side of the coin to "makes sure everyone knows that everyone knows", but it is slightly different in application as this is mainly about small group or 1-to-1 contexts. Sometimes there is a conflict dynamic, or a situation going on; and starting a meeting with "I know the two of you aren't seeing eye to eye on some things right now, and I would like to help you resolve that if that would be helpful; however this meeting isn't the place or time for that, are we all ok and happy to proceed with the meeting as-is?" Whilst this won't fix what's going on, it does acknowledges it, and thereby robs it of a lot of its power to disrupt for a time.
Acronyms are a PITA.

This one is more about how teams grow. Acronyms grow in companies like wild flowers: they seem pretty and useful until your lawn is swamped under them. Some acronyms are going to come in, no-matter what, but if there is a default push back against new acronyms then hopefully only the semi-useful stick. But every acronyms added to a companies informal lexicon is a barrier to a new starter becoming productive. Even one well known in a business context, e.g. 'BAU' - Business As Usual, is unlikely to be known in an engineering one, or via-versa, e.g. 'LGTM' - Looks Good To Me. A good rule of thumb is in an email write out the acronym in full the first time with the acronym in parentheses after then you can use the acronym with impunity in the rest of the email, but often on a re-read you'll just remove the acronym in the end.