| > The unwritten rule is that managers aren't incentivized to police this behavior. Unless it is the manager who has to constantly do the reminding. Then there is swift policing :-) Yes, this is actually normal "human" behavior. But this level of extreme was ridiculous, even within Intel. I quickly left the team once the project was over. Life is too short. > Wise words. In cultures that do this, you have to adapt and work more on narrative/story-telling. Narrative/story telling is good, but is orthogonal to the issue here. The usual flow is to use narrative/story telling to explain the why (motivation, etc). However, some senior management will expect you to also talk about the details. And this is where the advice came in: "Put the details, and make sure they don't understand them." My sin was that I was presenting the details in a manner where they could understand it (without losing the nuances and details - I was mere presenting the same material "well"). A more severe example will enlighten: I once solved a challenging problem with a really simple solution. My manager had multiple sessions with me to coach me on how to present that simple solution in a much more complex way. He emphasized that senior management should not realize that the solution was simple - no matter how impactful it was. Yes - this is also a general "human" problem, and is common in lots of places. However, when you're striving to be the best company in X, it is wise not to settle for "average". |