Most people have seen the statistic where a man will apply for a job he meets 6/10 qualifications for and the woman won’t unless she meets 10/10 (states HBR, Confidence Code, Lean In…). This is centered in a lot of bias, imposter syndrome, and also business norms and these are all hurting not just the job prospects of someone applying but also the success of the person who actually gets hired (Natalie speculation here…)
I’ve been accused of being a narcissist before. Not in those exact words, but I will never forget the conversation. I was 25 and a good friend of mine and I were talking. She finally said (in a rare pause of my banter), “Natalie, you always talk about you and never ask about me.” Wow, that one hit hard and I felt guilty and ashamed. I had never thought about it before. I wondered where my baby-boomer parents had gone wrong in raising me as a millennial snowflake (who was nothing but extraordinary) who didn’t know the true definition of meaningful discourse. Ever since then, I’ve put a concerted effort into making sure that I ask the other person I’m talking to questions about themselves. It’s a constant reminder in my awkward conversational brain – “ask them about their day, weekend, year…yeah—that’s perfect!” We often run into a narcissism problem in product development, too, and it can stem from fear and shame.
Think about when you started in a new job or new department and the flood of acronyms that you heard. It was like people were speaking a different language and they pretty much were. I’m not saying acronyms are bad – they do have their places as mnemonic devices and to shorten things – but when they develop into a lingo that is unrecognizable to anyone outside the fold we have a problem.
Talking to a team about carryover at a daily scrum meeting led me into a very uncomfortable confrontation with someone who already didn’t like me. Not sure why but I ascertained it had something to do with the unhealthy relationship between product and technology organizations and the fact that product was pushed by sales to make commitments on behalf of the teams that were essentially never met on time (more on that issue in a later post). So a contentious confrontation – read on…
Let’s talk about cost of delay – the cost of having NOT done something. Basically the opportunity cost of choosing to do one thing over another. Seems simple enough but it’s not.
