<story><title>Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin</title><url>https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/23/idle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>teilo</author><text>This is what immediately came to mind. The OA missed the fourth reason why his Canary McGuffin wasn&amp;#x27;t touched: Maybe you, who gave the task, haven&amp;#x27;t clearly communicated the problem, or the solution you are looking for. Now who is to blame in that circumstance?&lt;p&gt;Presuming it&amp;#x27;s not an issue of laziness, or incompetence, or of higher priorities trumping your request, why are you looking at your McGuffin instead of communicating with the person you assigned the task?</text></item><item><author>brobdingnagians</author><text>I find it rather humorous in reading the comments that this seems to have hit an interesting nerve, viz. being asked to perform [stupid] tasks for someone else and then being monitored and reminded intermittently in a passive way without clear communication.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there are good and important tasks whose importance is clearly communicated, but which go undone. But, in my experience, the majority of tasks like this might need to be either (1) better specified so that they can actually be understood and completed or (2) communicate better what the importance of the task is with an honest evaluation by both people and comparing to the value of other workload priorities at present.&lt;p&gt;We have a tendency to believe that our task is the most important one right now, and that our ideas are the best ideas, without understanding what someone else is really doing and without taking an objective look at why something else could be more valuable.&lt;p&gt;We can use that ourselves when we try to assign tasks to others. Are we being fair to them, their priorities, and their workload? Maybe our task isn&amp;#x27;t all that important? Maybe we can communicate better with them to understand the totality of what they value, or maybe what they think a better alternative to our task would be. After all, Alexander the Great asked his troops if they had any ideas for strategies... and he won a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vidarh</author><text>The &lt;i&gt;starting point&lt;/i&gt; of the article is that she discovered a communications issue: For whatever reason her counterpart is giving misleading responses when she thought she was communicating with them.&lt;p&gt;The point is that this &amp;quot;canary McGuffin&amp;quot; revealed there was an issue that talking to them didn&amp;#x27;t. That issue might be all kinds of things, including poor communication prior, but that&amp;#x27;s incidental to the fact that having an idea of how the tasks should proceed means you have a non-intrusive way of checking if their communication means what you think it does.</text></comment>
<story><title>Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin</title><url>https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/23/idle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>teilo</author><text>This is what immediately came to mind. The OA missed the fourth reason why his Canary McGuffin wasn&amp;#x27;t touched: Maybe you, who gave the task, haven&amp;#x27;t clearly communicated the problem, or the solution you are looking for. Now who is to blame in that circumstance?&lt;p&gt;Presuming it&amp;#x27;s not an issue of laziness, or incompetence, or of higher priorities trumping your request, why are you looking at your McGuffin instead of communicating with the person you assigned the task?</text></item><item><author>brobdingnagians</author><text>I find it rather humorous in reading the comments that this seems to have hit an interesting nerve, viz. being asked to perform [stupid] tasks for someone else and then being monitored and reminded intermittently in a passive way without clear communication.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there are good and important tasks whose importance is clearly communicated, but which go undone. But, in my experience, the majority of tasks like this might need to be either (1) better specified so that they can actually be understood and completed or (2) communicate better what the importance of the task is with an honest evaluation by both people and comparing to the value of other workload priorities at present.&lt;p&gt;We have a tendency to believe that our task is the most important one right now, and that our ideas are the best ideas, without understanding what someone else is really doing and without taking an objective look at why something else could be more valuable.&lt;p&gt;We can use that ourselves when we try to assign tasks to others. Are we being fair to them, their priorities, and their workload? Maybe our task isn&amp;#x27;t all that important? Maybe we can communicate better with them to understand the totality of what they value, or maybe what they think a better alternative to our task would be. After all, Alexander the Great asked his troops if they had any ideas for strategies... and he won a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taneq</author><text>Same, my thoughts went straight to the quest giver. After receiving a response of &amp;quot;getting there&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s tricky&amp;quot; for the third time, rather than sitting back and smugly speculating on the deficiencies of the adventurer while &amp;quot;nothing happens&amp;quot;, maybe they should have asked &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s the problem?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m seeing a bit of a pattern in these blog posts, where the author is more interested in proving their superiority over others than in actually getting stuff done.</text></comment>