In amongst changes and uncertainty and upheaval, it’s reasonable to feel a little ragged at times. It can leave us tired and empty. While all that might be going on, there’s a truism that is always true: be kind.

When it comes to interacting with others, just be kind. We don’t know what’s going on in the other person’s life. So be considerate that their life might be ragged too.

The ironic thing is, being kind requires more strength and courage than the word implies. It is not naïve or weak.

Be kind. It can’t be any easier than that.

There’s a term in several industries referring to a ‘high-reliability organisation’. The obvious industries are aviation and the chemical process industry. As the label implies, these are businesses that are striving to be highly reliable.

Formally, the characteristics of HROs could be summarised as:

• preoccupation with failure;

• reluctance to simplify explanations;

• sensitivity to operations;

• deference to frontline expertise; and

• commitment to resilience.

I look at that list and think, they’re all pretty good themes for any business to strive for. Considering failure helps prevent it. Simplifying makes sense. Knowing your operations, check. Expertise and resilience. They’re good strategies overall.

“Expectations” are rarely considered as something to be worked on for self-improvement.

When we’re faced with challenges, we look to our abilities in decision making or leadership or time management or habits or organisational skills. But not expectations in the first place.

Expectations set the scene for our daily lives and achievements. Constantly falling short is detrimental to health and happiness.

It’s time to look at our expectations, too, and recognise when they could be taken down a notch. We’re always expecting so much from everything and everyone, and ourselves. Maybe instead of expecting more, consider if it’s good enough.

Alright, I know, no one wants to remember back to school days when we had to identify the noun, verb, adjective, and everyone’s favourite, the dangling participle.

However, re-learning a little bit about grammar and paragraph structure will help your readers.

Here are two hints that can make anyone’s writing better:

• Avoid the passive voice. It’s overused and weakens your point.

• State your argument/thesis/point clearly and succinctly first. Only then should you go on to support it. Don’t leave the point to the end.

There’s no doubt that writing well is a dominant factor in the quest to “improve communications”.

Clutter accumulates when we’re not looking. It’s the untidy collection of things, ideas, or thoughts that can weigh us down, if we’re not careful. Sometimes we don’t even realise it’s all that clutter putting us in a bad mood.

In the same way, clutter can accumulate in a business in the form of documents, procedures, forms and paperwork. The paper-less offices remains a myth, twenty years after it was predicted.

Clearing away the clutter is cathartic. Decluttering a room, an inbox, or a busy mind leaves us with additional cognitive space to take something else on, or, even better, relax.

The study and understanding of habits have been in the current media lately with books such as Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits being well-known in that arena.

Habits can be good or bad, and we can want to form a habit or break a habit. All very valid.

I’ve become interested in the difference between doing something because it’s a habit or doing it because we must, in order to comply with something – a rule, a law, an expectation. And when a habit is done for compliance, it might be different than if it is done because we want to.

Surveys asking for our opinions land in our inboxes often.

The question type can be literal or abstract; the responder might not understand the intent of the question. And there’s no way to measure if the responder has understood.

The form of the answer can be multiple-choice, a yes/no, a scale, or freeform. With the first three types, I often find I want to use an option that’s not there.

Designing a questionnaire for research purposes has many variables. When doing your next one, spare a thought for the designer of the questions: there’s more to it than you think.

Being bureaucratic equates to being overly concerned with procedures, which may overlook efficiency or common sense. The lack of flexibility results in inefficiencies and delays.

Humans have the cognitive ability to organise groups, add structure and develop processes for repetitive tasks: this is a positive. Where it becomes negative is when those systematised arrangements and fixed hierarchies become more important than the ultimate goal of them.

In the main, society wouldn’t function without some bureaucracy. Neither would companies. Knowing who makes decisions and what comes next means we have the brain space to think about how to do it better.

In doing some reading about machine reliability, and risk-based predictive maintenance, I came across an interesting theory: the Resnikoff Conundrum.

The theory comes from a mathematical study into reliability-based maintenance in 1978. I think the theory also applies to quantitative risk management, exposing an issue with statistical risk management.

In order to collect failure data, there must be failures. But serious failures are designed out, so, there’s no or very little data. Failures of critical items causing injury or death are unacceptable and are therefore designed out.

So: we are trying to prevent failure, based on data that requires failure.

Awhile ago I took part in a group forum with fifteen young engineers to discuss ‘evolving technical and skills requirements’. They were asked “what one skill is most important in your mind?”

The answers were: communication, compromise, versatility, listening, teamwork, adaptability, technical competence, anticipation, stakeholder engagement, accountability, time management.

Recall the group topic: “Evolving technical and skills requirements”.

I expected responses like “design review techniques”, “charpy test interpretation”, “reading material certificates”, “weld design”.

So, either they are comfortable with their technical skills and therefore they don’t need a mention, or, only one of them was actually exposed to technical work.

We’re all guilty of stating “they should do something” at times in our lives.

“They should’ve known that might happen.” “They shouldn’t have let them get away with that”.

The awkward question is to figure out exactly who “they” are. “They” are people too.

And, honestly, there are many instances when “they” is actually, kind of, “us”.

Maybe “we” should’ve said something, or “we” should’ve known what might happen. Putting responsibility onto someone else, some amorphous “they”, absolves us of culpability. But it is disingenuous. Make sure you’re not indirectly or obliquely part of the “they” that you speak of.

One of the complexities with describing competency in knowledge workers or technical specialists is that we tend to have trouble explaining what we do.

More to the point, we have trouble establishing, and more importantly, proving, the value behind the work done.

To resolve this gap, I wonder if there might be something to the strategy of learning how to tell stories well. Not tall tales, but rather the story of what happened.

At the end of a project, or when we’ve resolved a particularly difficult technical problem, the act of capturing that outcome – what happened – is rarely done well.

It’s always difficult to know how to talk to someone who is experiencing grief or loss. I’ve recently learned that the most generous form of sympathy is to share a specific memory about the person.

This philosophy holds for general appreciation as well:

the most generous form of appreciation is sharing a specific memory.

The most effective way to describe – or appreciate – a person is to tell a specific story about them. This demonstrates that you know something specific about them.

It shows a level of connection and shared history, and that can’t help but touch the other person deeply.

There are two important phases to gaining knowledge:

1. Experience the world, and,

2. Process it.

I’ve mentioned the importance of experience before. This is about the importance of the second step.

The ‘processing’ of our experience is the act of looking for connections and realisations and links and relevance, to other parts of our experience and character.

The study of logic, the study of philosophers, and even the study of knowledge, often raises a concept of relevance and the possibilities of links between one topic and another.

This is where the magic is – this is where new knowledge thrives.

In the document control or quality management sense, a “document” is not the same as a “record”.

Successful businesses will have a set of policies, plans and procedures – these are all important documents, but these do not provide the record of them being followed.

When there is a necessity to prove that an activity, control, test, checklist or procedure has been completed, there should be a record of that. The record is the evidence.

A procedural document says “do”; a record says “done”.

Having a procedure is great; having a record that the procedure is being followed is even better.

I like the symmetry when the first of a month lands on a Monday. A new month, a new week, a new beginning.

Of course, calendars are a human construct, it’s made up and artificial.

But these artificial constructs can bring structure and reliability to our lives.

The repetition, the reliability, the “here it comes again” expectation help to give us a framework – scaffolding – to build our lives and our goals on.

The opposite is change, uncertainty, and confusion. And yet, with all of that, Monday still comes. So does a new month. This is a structure to hang onto.

We don’t notice what doesn’t matter. And we do notice what does matter. Like when we’re in the market for a car, the kind we want is on every corner.

It is a human condition, a pre-recorded response: we notice what matters. To be noticed, it has to matter.

So, if it doesn’t matter that you haven’t read the procedure, or filled out that form, or gotten that approval – then it’s absence won’t be noticed. Exactly.

Any process that has no consequences if it’s not followed, will not be adhered to.

Because if it doesn’t matter, it won’t be noticed.

There’s an abundance of inspirational quotes and memes available out there. That’s a tangible way of being inspired: find a quote, put it on the wall, and then gaze at it now and then.

There’s another way, perhaps it can be called intangible, to be inspired. Take a close look at those around you, and who you spend your time with.

The well-known phrase “you are the company you keep” is rather accurate.

When you have the opportunity to interact with, get to know, and connect with inspirational people, that is better than looking at a poster on the wall.

I like the idea of being focussed on outcomes. At the start of a project or task, we should know what the finish line looks like.

The unspoken struggle with that philosophy though, is the not so rare case of not knowing what the expected outcome is.

When the outcome is unknown or unclear, the trick is to figure out how to manage that anyway. The strategy might be to assume an expected outcome, or, to start down a path to help determine the best outcome.

Either way, it’s important to declare the expected outcome, so that there’s no doubt.

A search of the word “unique” provides lists about how to be unique as a person. There are several descriptions of how a person’s attitude, experiences, behaviour, creativity, perspective, and other attributes, are the things that make each and every one of us unique.

In our work world, it’s useful to every once in a while, take the unique route. Provide output unlike anything else. Present a new view, or, write about an alternative approach. Show an unexpected conclusion or describe how another stance applies.

It is these forays into the uniqueness that raise profiles and help us to get noticed.