I was lucky to learn this lesson early in my career. Many times, an organization will look for consolidation opportunities. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to consolidate systems: there are cost savings involved, unit costs go down, you decrease the effort needed for change management…it’s the classic argument to create scale. A transaction is a transaction, right? So when is it a problem?
This was a new one I had added after the original list was created. This is one of my biggest weaknesses….for some reason, I would always attribute another’s person reaction/non reaction to something I had done. Which would be ok if it was balanced…but I found I did it when I thought the reaction was negative. I would often jump to conclusions….someone didn’t answer me back on email right away because they thought my email was stupid. They didn’t return my call because I wasn’t important enough. They didn’t stop to chat with me when they walked by my office because they don’t like me. What I realized was that this was almost never the case. I was creating a negative narrative in my head. Continue reading