In my previous post, I talked about Rule #2 of the Unspoken Rules of office, let's go on now to next one.
Unspoken Rules of Office (1) / 辦公室潛規則 (一)
在上一篇文章中，我談過了辦公室潛規則第二條，讓我們現在繼續吧。
Rule 3 : If it is under your responsibility, do it! If not, let other people do it.
第三條 : 係你嘅就要做， 唔係你嘅就俾返人做。
At the first look, it seems like asking you to push away works, but it is not. It is about having the right person who has the right tools and authority to do the job. If you are not properly equipped, you simply cannot have the job done.
表面上這一條好像叫大家推卸工作，但其實並非這樣。我覺得這一條其實是叫大家在其位才可司其職。因為只有身居恰當的職位的人才會擁有合適的工具和權力。有時，單單只是欠缺了其中一樣，就足以令你以失敗告終。
Without the right tool, no matter if it is software, hardware, human resources or internal procedure, you name it, you need to spend extra effort to compensate the gap which means waste of resources. Those resources will definitely give better ROI to you and your company if they were used at appropriate areas.
當你沒有合適的工具，不論是軟件，硬件，人材或者是內部程序，什至是其他任何東西，你肯定要花費大量資源去彌補這些不足。而這些資源，用在它們原來應該被應用的地方，肯定會為你及你公司帶來更好的回報。
Authority is even more difficult to overcome, sometimes it is impossible to do so. When you need to confront with other people's authorities, you will piss others off. They will become very defensive, don't be surprise if they tried to set you up, it is clear that they won't cooperate at all. At this point of time, you probably can bid farewell to your success.
權限則是更難以克服的高牆。當你跟他人的權限正面硬碰，惹怒他人是必然的結果。當然人家一定變得對你十分忌憚，不對你加害已經是最好的情況了，當然不會跟你合作。當你走到這個田地，你已經可以說是注定要失敗了。
My personal experience, about 3.5 years ago, shortly after I joined this company, there was a dispute about project implementation lead time. Lots of finger pointings and finally the source of problem was identified, the order processing procedure! I was responsible for the implementation team, which was at the latest stage of the whole project cycle. However, my boss asked me to lead the process for reengineering of Order Processing Procedure!!! The process belonged to other department which was completely out of my control and responsibility.
As suggested above, i got tremendous push back from all other departments, no one cooperated with me. I could not push anyone to do anything because I didn't have any authority over them. The whole thing dragged on for over half year and finally head of the other department actually asked me to step down and let his man take the lead instead. A complete failure of me, althought on one blame me for that, I felt upset for quite some time.
舉一個我自己親身經歷，就在3年多前，我剛加入現在的公司沒多久。公司中有些關於項目實施的時間要求的爭議。經過一大輪各部門間的互相指責，最後都能夠找到問題的根源，就是在訂單的處理程序之上。雖然我負責的實施團隊是在整個訂單處理過程的最下游，不知為何我當時的老闆卻指令要我去帶令這個訂單處理程序改變項目，但是訂單處理程序是完完全全屬於其他部門的管理範圍，與我的部門基本上沒有任何關係。
就如上面所提到的一樣，其他部門的人當然完全不會給我任何協助支援。 他們就是一副不合作的態度。亦因為我沒有任何權限去安排，推動其他部門去跟進這個項目，整個項目在拖拉了半年之後，就在其他部門的頂頭總監要求之下，由我手中送回到他們旗下繼續跟進。雖然沒有人怪責我不能完成這工作，但是對我來說卻是一個極度挫敗的經驗。
So far we had talked about 2 rules which seems to be legitimate, and I believe we should be following them in our daily work life. The rest may or may not apply (to you), I hope that I will have chance to talk about some of them later.
我已經談過兩條我認為是真的需要認真對待的「潛規則」。希望日後有基會再談談其他的辦公室規則吧。
Dilbert comics strips are from dilbert.com
Other img here.