Clarity Strategic^TM

What's the best takeaway from a good job? You may be thinking

• a piece of the action
• a nice severance package
• meeting terrific people
• enhanced experience

...and you'd be right on all counts. And I'm not talking about any of that here.

We learn stuff everywhere we go. Hopefully we remember it. And even more hopefully we use it. And, as educators know, if we teach it to others, we demonstrate that we've learned it.

Here are Five Laws Of The Work Universe - I picked them up at one of my own favorite jobs, and where applicable they are named after the coworker who taught me. In some cases, these Laws were an open secret around the workplace: everybody knew they were in operation. It might be better for us if they were.

1. The Law Of Employee Performance Resets (Porada's Law): 10 AB == 1 AS, where
   • AB == "attaboys" and
   • AS == "aw, shit"

   Your next AS wipes out your last ten ABs. Because everyone remembers the last thing you did.

2. The Law Of Vain Repetition (commonly referred to as "Meskimen's Law," but we named it after "Fred" instead): There's never time to do it right; there's always time to do it over.

   We learned, working with Fred (not an actual person, but a project), that this Law was always to hang over us.

3. The Law of Holes (we called it "Karchmer's Law," though others have taken credit): If you're in one, stop digging.

   There is a useful related Corollary here: You will recognize that a hole is forming by what is piling up around you.

4. The Law Of Lack Of Knowledge (Blankschaen's First Law): Nobody knows.

   Customers, managers, coworkers, they don't know what they want; only what they don't. And you get to find out what they don't want as soon as you do it.

5. The Law Of Constant Brevity (Szabo's Hook, pictured): If you can't make your point in a single sentence, you don't have a point to make.

   We would learn not to have more than a couple such sentences, because the Hook was always where we could see it.

Did your workplace contribute a different set of laws? I would love to hear them, and I can see that they live on to be a blessing for hapless workers everywhere. :-) :-) :-)