Day #33 | Stay in your lane, unless it affects you

The most important for any team and organization to work is trust. Trust that your colleagues deliver competent work cause that is the reason that is hired.

But sometimes incompetent work gets delivered and you are the one affected by it.

Then what do you do?

Will you question the process and quality of the work by someones who should be an expert in the domain of the work?

Or will you proceed to continue your work and then handle the negative consequences if there are any?

It is hard.

The first solution displays transparency from both parties. Indicating that both parties are open to questions, feedback, and/or criticism. But don’t trust that good work is being delivered, cause why else the comments?

Your comment on it to either bring to a better result or future work. Which means the work delivered is below or average.

The second solution indicates that you trust and respect the work delivered. But have a feeling that on the surface the work is incompetent.
But of course, you are not the expert in that field so you trust each other. This shows that even though you don’t agree, you trust the person’s domain knowledge and work.

But this may cloud your own work and judgment which may result in negative consequences.

This is a dilemma usually that people face.

I make these decisions based on context and my experience. I’m mostly hired as a software engineer. If a colleague in sales is requesting something for our retailers, I wouldn’t ask on why. I trust my colleague cause I have limited knowledge in sales. For example, I don’t know where our customers buy our products, I may have an idea but ultimately I don’t know for sure.

But if a web or app design colleague request something and I have my doubts, I would question the request. Even though I’m not an expert in that particular field (user interactions and experience), I have build many products to serve those purposes.

So in conclusion stay in your lane if you don’t have solid knowledge. If you feel like your comments could improve the work done, then do it if you have some credibility on it. But if you don’t have any, stay in your lane unless it is going to impact your work heavily.