Completeness

There is a certain level of anxiety, nervousness, or uneasiness I feel when someone gives me information. I question the information in my mind. I run it through all kinds of internal tests to see if it makes sense.

The first thing I try to do is verify the information. Too often the information is based on inaccurate assumptions, even when the correct information is nearby. The second thing I do is to try and wrap my arms around the information and get a complete understanding of it. Many times I find holes in the information or find it incomplete. Please see Workplace Reconnaissance post for more information on that.

Anyway, I feel much more comfortable when the person providing the information has a quality I call "Completeness". This is where the person approaches any topic and examines it from many Perspectives before passing the information on to me. These people tend to look at components of something independently then as one. This helps me perform at a higher level because I am able to spend less time questioning whether or not the person ran it through a bunch of internal tests and more time on thinking about how to use this information.

The good news is that Completeness is something that can be trained. It takes time and there needs to be a consistent approach that everyone can get used to following, but in the end, it is well worth it. I created Perspectives to bring more people in Resicom to have a higher level of Completeness. By staying firm in my approach and by demanding verification of information, I have been able to successfully raise the level of performance of my team. I hope you can do the same.