The last two posts covered how distractions can help relieve pain. And people use distraction as a tool to hide risks/painful situations.
Let us cover a few real-world examples.
Distraction tools at their best
Project Manager hiding the pain of answering tough questions
Project Managers often paint a rosy picture of ‘all is well’ in the Project Status Reports (PSRs). The distraction is – everything said other than flagging the real project risks, issues and inefficiencies.
Sales team hiding the pain of giving specific facts
As a customer, you want to understand the value the technology vendor is offering for the investment. Therefore, a vendor needs to spend time and effort understanding your requirements. Unfortunately, the easier path that many Sales teams choose is to give a general pitch on the size of their company, number of employees and offices across the globe. Then, they talk about everything other than specific information about your project. It is a distraction, so watch out!
Executives call for meetings to hide the pain of making decisions
Many executives are notoriously bad at making decisions that matter. So, they call for meeting over meeting with no decision. The meetings are merely a tool to distract others that we are making progress.
These are a few examples, but our workplaces are full of such distractions that are meant to obscure real information from you.
Watch out and look out for such traps! Unfortunately, you are going through them many times in your work week!
