Pictured: a miserable hellscape that awaits me six months a year.
One February over my winter vacation from school when I was about ten, my father asked me to come outside to “give him a hand.” Now, please know that I detest winter. I always have. I do not like cold weather, I have no use for snow, and I lose the feeling in my hands faster than most others. I chalk it up to Mediterranean genetics; I am legitimately not built for the colder climate. Tack on to this that I was probably 10 or so and was very likely deeply entranced in a Zelda game, or maybe Madden. It’s safe to say that I was not adding considerable value to the universe, but I definitely didn’t want to go outside.
Anyways, my dad asked me to come outside, so I begrudgingly threw on my jacket, boots, mittens, maybe snow pants, too. I remember stalling to see if the need for me outside would go away before I actually got there. It did not and my father was irritated when I got outside. I don’t believe this had much to do with me being late to arrive – my father was generally irritated in the way the father from “A Christmas Story” is always irritated. I look back on that irritation with fondness.
Once I got outside, he handed me a shovel and told me to stand back a bit. “I’m going to break up this ice on the driveway,” he said, “and when I step back, scoop it up and throw it over there,” he gestured towards the other side of the driveway. I stepped back, and he started whacking on the ice covering the driveway with what at the time seemed like Thor’s own hammer. Looking back, it was a garden-variety sledgehammer with a longer handle.
I thought this was exceedingly stupid and my mind wandered. After all, the ice would eventually melt, and I saw no reason to... “Steve!” I looked over to see my father’s annoyed expression, quickly realizing that I had missed my cue to shovel out the broken ice. I scooped it up and tossed it where it belonged, and then went back to daydreaming. This was a stupid exercise, and Ganon wasn’t going to hang out in Zelda waiting to be defeated forever. Why were we wasting our time outside fighting with ice anyways?
“Stephen!” I can count on one hand how many times anyone has called me by my full name. I looked over at Dad. “Why aren’t you paying attention? I asked one thing out of you. Is that so complicated?” Like most ten-year-olds, I had no good answer for why I was not on top of things, so I came up with a terrible response that included full honesty: “This is dumb. I don’t want to be out here. Just let the ice melt on its own!” Now if I were writing a TV sitcom, this is where the Bob Sagat dad character would have sat down and had a heart-to-heart with the kid and everyone would have laughed as the crazy grandpa slipped on the ice in the background. Roll credits!
Instead, he just yelled at me, told me I was being no help, and to go inside. Later that evening, I heard him tell my mother that he “got enough of the ice up to prevent flooding.” (Screeching noise) Wait, what flooding?
It turns out that our house was built in a bit of a low-lying area of the land, and because water naturally likes to go downhill, there was an artificial circular depression dug in around the house to keep the dirt graded away from our house. Importantly, my parent’s house was a split entry with living space (my room, specifically) on the bottom floor – which was half below grade. As it turns out, the weathermen were predicting a warmup and some rain the following day, and there was enough ice on the driveway to have prevented proper drainage. I was going to have a wet bedroom if something wasn’t done.
“Steve,” I can hear you saying, “you aren’t writing the Wonder Years. What does this have to do with an IT career?” It’s a fair question and fortunately, we’ve arrived at the punchline. If I had known why I was asked to shovel the ice or why it was being chipped away at all - if I had known what the larger mission of my work was - I for sure would have been more focused on it. But my dad missed two essential pieces of the puzzle for me – he didn’t explain how my work would have tied into the bigger picture of what needed to be done. He also didn’t help me see how it was good for us as a family - and me, in particular.
How much do you want to bet that everyone on this team can tell you how their work benefits the team goals?
This is exactly the same thing that any tech leader needs to do. We all occasionally wonder why we have to sit through CAB meetings or go through another security audit. That we dread these is a sign that we haven’t been properly communicated why they are being done. In order to get someone to help you achieve your goal, you often need to – and probably always should – explain why this task matters, and how it relates to the bigger objective.
This is true for all leaders, and I think it’s especially true in IT where we can sometimes feel disconnected from the overall success of the company or organization. And I think most leaders would agree with this, but I think it’s also critical to know and practice even if you are not leading a team. For instance, if you work the Help Desk at your company and you need a client who called in with a problem to do something so you can help troubleshoot, you could just tell them to do whatever it is you need to be done, or you could say, “in order to get some data from your computer that I’ll need in order to solve the problem quickly, would you mind running a script for me?”
I guarantee that if you try the latter, you’ll be more successful. This works for all levels of an organization. If you’re a consultant, you certainly can use the same framework when you’re trying to get information out of the client’s staff team. I have worked with lots of consultants, and the best would explain what they were trying to do and how it would ultimately help my team out – then I was a lot more willing to open up to them.
All of this is to say that one of the most basic tools of getting someone to help you is to explain why what you’re trying to do is beneficial to the organization. As a freebie Pro Tip: If you’re having trouble explaining why a task ties back to bigger objectives, goals, or missions, maybe what you’re doing isn’t that important. I’ve used this litmus test myself before I’ve delegated something or asked for help several times. It’s stopped me from wasting a lot of time.
Ultimately, we all want to do work that matters and that is valued. By explaining why a task matters, you can get more done, and help everyone around you realize why their efforts are valued.
On to you:
Have you ever been asked to do a task and had no idea why you were doing it, or what purpose it served?
Look at your task list, is there something that you need help with? Practice explaining how that task ties back to a larger goal. Say it out loud a few times.
Is there something on your task list that you don’t know exactly why you’re doing it? See if you can tie it back to the larger group, or company goals.