A few weeks ago, I wrote an email where I stated “You get results from what you pay attention to.” I was actually talking about management, but I am realizing that the statement applies in all aspects of life. It sounds banal, almost trite, but capitalizing on this assumption require discipline and focus.<\/p>\n
My personal experience is that the behavior of managers informs their employees as to the values of the company. No matter what the vision statement says, it is day-to-day behavior that matters. Even if the avowed goal is to create the highest quality product, when managers spend every meeting asking about reducing cost, their employees will focus on cost reduction. If a manager asks their team every week about the status of project A and never mentions project B, which project will the team be working on? This was the point I was trying to make when I wrote that original email. This is something I want to remember when I am a manager, that my employees will concentrate on the things I show interest in – if I want something to get done, I have to convey its importance to them, and be able to prioritize their efforts so that I am not asking them for several conflicting goals. <\/p>\n
Wes’s comment on my amateur post<\/a> started me thinking about the wider implications of this statement. He said “I have also observed that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m only truly good at things I truly love, because those are the things I enjoy doing even when there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no one paying me to do them.” That comment helped me make the connection between my observation about management and previous thoughts on passion<\/a>. We pay attention to the things we love doing, the things that deeply matter to us. For me to get good at something, I have to love doing it. That post from last year explained that part of the reason I was leaving programming was that I didn’t have passion for it, and because of that, I was never going to be great at it. <\/p>\n