Now that I'm secured back in a permanent Operational Role as a Supervisor there are some things I need to explain to my co-workers, as communication is key. I am fully aware that this is something I have perpetually annoyed people with throughout my career in Hospitality and I am now doing the same thing in my logistics role and I will continue to do the same things in the bar that I own, but since I won't have anyone to answer to, I will be a lot more forth coming. I believe it is a trait that many people and companies say they want, but in reality are very much not ok with.
That trait is "ingenuity"

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's annoying, you can feel the arrogance in its definition.
One of the main hurdles with ingenuity and the way my brain works especially is that most other people don't see the world the way I do. I'm not saying the way I see it is better, as I said, it can be really annoying; but it has helped to find many strange solutions to common problems and/or upset the status quo.
As I've gotten older and more experienced, I have gained more and more successes through ingenuity, nothing should be off limits. I am still however limited by meeting people in the middle, but that is how you get buy in, the issue with that is that it takes longer to get the win.
I will see inefficiencies that others have just come to except as a short fall of the business and I will find a way to work around them, usually in a way that in the grand scheme of things, results in far less effort but if people only see the little picture, they can go against the idea, making it look like the idea is at fault. It is also highly recommended to thoroughly point out the problem before fixing it, as people will be quick to point out the flaws in your solution. It's very much a "better the devil you know" kind of mentality, but what you need is the buy in from others to engage with you in order to progress the solution further and iron out the the teething problems.
I am glad to know that I'm comfortable with the ingenuity of others, the way I became so comfortable and aware of this was through communication. It was quite a simple switch where instead of asking "What are you doing?", I started to ask "Why are you doing that?". As I've probably mentioned before, I have a huge issue with people who lack the willingness to think critically. I nearly I said ability instead of willingness, because sometimes it really feels that way, but I have to believe that that is not the case.
My ingenuity comes from a need to understand every facet of the operation I'm working with because I realised very early on, that a lot of jobs that "managers" do are unnecessary and out-dated but still go on for much longer than necessary. I love that in my new role I have to under go training in #LeanManagement which everyone has to go through, but so few people actually learn from. So I love the reinforcement of what I believe and how I operate is what they claim to want, but then I get so much push back when it actually happens.

Part of this training was to use the #5WhyAnalysis when solving problems;

Once again, super useful training. That I have to constantly repeat to people when getting push back. That is largely due to the fact that is not just how I look at problems, this is how I look at every task I'm asked to do. I also have a tendency to pre-empt this by over explaining the purpose of a task when handing it over to a member of staff. Which is why I was furious a few weeks ago when my highest level superior was coaching us on how we need to improve a Quality based Metric which boils down to staff having pay a little more attention in order to make less errors. When asking if the staff already knew why these errors caused issues, his response was that they don't need to know, they just need to stop it. That sickens me, the whole "because I said so" mentality, frustrates me to my core. This was just a passing comment but at this point in my life, I'm pretty done with it, I wanted to quit there and then but then I remembered that caring less about whether or not I'm keeping my job compared to whether or not I'm good at my job, is a game changer for me.
I could have wrote this in a much more constructive and useful way, but this was more for the therapeutic aspect of writing as well as being one of the posts I can refer people to if they try and point out what they perceive to be a flaw and can I prove that A. I already know, and B. this is why I continue to act this way.
I will get more structured now that I'm planning to post more again, but I'm trying to commit to one post a day.
This was Day 1. Thank you for reading
Let me know what you think
I will do a follow up
Big Love x
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