Developing Soft Skills
Self-Smart,
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T
he topic of this install-
ment of the Developing
Soft Skills series is how
to be self-smart, which
really involves two subtopics, be-
ing work smart and being career
smart. In this issue, we’ll focus on
being work smart by discussing the
following three mantras: perfect is
the enemy of the good; when things
go wrong, blame yourself; and
overconfidence is a deal breaker.
The common thread here is to fo-
cus your work on what brings the
best return with reasonable effort,
and avoid behaviors and efforts
that become counterproductive or
bring insignificant return. In the
next issue, we’ll focus on building
career smart skills.
Perfect Is the
Enemy of the Good
To get a good result—say, between
70 and 90 percent of a “theoreti-
cally” perfect solution—requires a
reasonable amount of time. To go
further than this requires a sub-
stantial amount of additional time
and effort, but such additional ef-
fort, with its associated time, of-
ten does more harm than good:
it might not justify the relatively
small amount of marginal return,
it might lead us to losing sight of
the problem, and it might hinder
and distract us form pursuing
other opportunities. The irony is
60 IT Pro July/August 2009 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1520-9202/09/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE
Part I:
Work Smart
Wushow “Bill” Chou, IT Professional Advisory Board
that the “perfect” solution might
not even be definable.
In one of his speeches, US Pres-
ident Barack Obama said, “We
can’t afford to make perfect the
enemy of the absolutely neces-
sary.” Maybe this is why he’s done
so much more in his first 100 days
in office than any president in
recent history.
Figure 1 illustrates graphically
the relationship between the
amount of return and the amount
of effort or time needed. It ap-
proximates a negative exponential
distribution.
Illustrating Example:
Mediocre Endings
Many projects end in medioc-
rity because a significant amount
of effort went into the project at
the beginning and there wasn’t
enough time left at the end to get
it done properly.
We’ve all witnessed the follow-
ing scenario at some point in our
lives. At the beginning of a proj-
ect, the people involved are very
enthusiastic and strive to do a per-
fect job. But they spend so much
time aiming for perfection that by
the time the project is about to be
due, a substantial amount of it still
isn’t done. The participants have
no choice but to do a rush job just
to finish. If they weren’t so am-
bitious initially, they could have
done a good job instead of a me-
diocre one.
I’ve seen many students fail to
turn in project assignments, not
because they didn’t put in the ef-
fort, but because they spent too
much energy at the beginning and
didn’t have enough time to finish
the assignment.
Illustrating Example:
Lost Opportunities
Setting a goal unrealistically as
“perfect” leads not only to a likely
failure but also contributes to
missed opportunities.
A smart technical manager at a
large company decided that with
computing power so cheap now,
he could develop a mathematical
software program to get a perfect
solution for configuring an “op-
timal” Internet connection that
would satisfy all traffic and perfor-
mance requirements. (The tools
available for such purposes are
all of a heuristic nature, meaning
they’ll give good answers but not
theoretically perfect ones.)
However, to get a perfect solu-
tion, the program needs perfect
inputs, and in this case, one of
the inputs is traffic projection.
Because there’s no way to give a
perfect traffic projection, a perfect
solution can’t exist. Furthermore,
the computational complexity
involved is extremely large, so
it would take an unreasonably
long time just to get one answer.
Thus, the software he developed
had only limited pragmatic value.
Had he used the same amount of
money and time to work on some-
thing more pragmatic, he could
have had something more useful
to show his boss. He could also
have been better recognized pro-
fessionally. By all accounts, this
was a lost opportunity.
When Things Go
Wrong, Blame Yourself
We all tend to blame others when
things go wrong. But ultimately,
it isn’t really important who’s at
fault—instead, we should focus
on what we could have done dif-
ferently or what we should do in
the future to prevent the same
things from going wrong.
Illustrating Example:
Managerial Understanding
It’s our responsibility to make
sure our manager has a good un-
derstanding of what we’re doing.
If the manager doesn’t, it’s our
fault, not the manager’s.
A first-level manager once
complained to me that her direct
supervisor didn’t understand or
appreciate what her group was
doing. I asked whether her man-
ager held regular staff meetings,
and she responded that he did,
so I asked whether she made pre-
sentations during those meetings
about her group’s activities. When
she replied in the affirmative, I
advised her that this miscommu-
nication was actually her fault.
It was her responsibility to com-
municate to her manager about
the group and to make sure he
understood—she just had to im-
prove her communications skills.
I suggested she practice explain-
ing to her mother what the group
was doing. If she could make her
mother understand after a five
to 10-minute presentation, she
Return
Good
result
with
reasonable
effort
Effort
Figure 1. Good vs. perfect.
should be able to make her man-
ager do the same.
Illustrating Example:
Workplace Culture
It’s our responsibility to integrate
ourselves into our workplace’s
culture. We shouldn’t expect the
workplace to adjust to us.
A senior director of a manu-
facturing company complained
that because of his ethnic back-
ground, he would never be pro-
moted to a VP position. Upon
further questioning, I learned
that he lived in California and
worked in Oregon, going home
to California every Friday after-
noon and returning to work in
Oregon every Monday morning.
I then asked how he socialized
with corporate management to
establish a good rapport with
them, and he said he couldn’t
because of his lengthy commute.
Therein lay the problem—if he
didn’t want to spend the effort
to mingle with corporate man-
agement, how could he expect
corporate management to accept
him as one of them? After some
reflection, he admitted that if he
had stayed in Oregon instead of
“Perfect” or
“near perfect”
• Marginal return not
justifiable by amount
of effort
• Undefinable ”perfect”
• Lost insight
• Missed opportunity
going home to California from
time to time, he might have a de-
cent chance of being promoted.
Illustrating Example:
Chronic Complainers
Chronic complainers are losers
who tend to fault others for their
failures and aren’t willing to take
personal responsibility to improve
their chances of success. Unfortu-
nately for these people, they have a
warped logic, and unless they ad-
just it, they’re likely to have only
limited career success.
Being a teacher for many years
in my career, I’ve seen plenty of
examples. Once, a student sent
me a very bitter email complain-
ing about the amount of material
to be covered in the midterm: “I
have to work 40 hours a week. I
can’t take a full day off to prepare
for the exam.” It was admirable
that he took classes while work-
ing full time, but he should have
been prepared to put enough
time into the classes he signed
up for. No one can expect to get
a passing grade without putting
enough effort into learning the
required material, regardless of
the reason.
computer.org/ITPro 61
 Developing Soft Skills
Overconfidence
Is a Deal Breaker
Yes, it’s important to exude con-
fidence, but there’s a thin line
between confidence and overcon-
fidence. While the former is cru-
cial to our success, the latter can
have the opposite effect.
Illustrating Example:
The Bush-Gore Debate
When we’re overconfident, we
tend to be muddy and careless in
our analysis and sloppy in our be-
havior and verbal expression. Do
you remember the first US presi-
dential debate in 2000 between Al
Gore and George W. Bush? Gore
was obviously overconfident, and
it showed in his mannerisms—
frequent sighing, rolling his eyes,
and so forth. Needless to say, this
didn’t go over well with some vot-
ers, and might have adversely af-
fected his chances in states with
close vote tallies.
Illustrating Example:
Vice President Joe Biden
If you ever watch Vice Presi-
dent Biden as he makes a verbal
slip-up, you might have noticed
that it always happens in the mid-
dle or near the end of a conver-
sation, when he seems to become
relaxed and overconfident. You
might also notice that from a pri-
vate citizen’s viewpoint, these so-
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62 IT Pro July/August 2009
called slip-ups don’t seem all that
bad. But from the perspective of
a high-ranking official, the oppo-
site is true—he’s seemingly drop-
ping his guard and expressing his
private thoughts, which isn’t “po-
litically correct” for someone in
his position.
Illustrating Example:
Venture Capitalists
C developed a software package
that roused the interest of sev-
eral venture capitalists. But due
to a combination of his lack of
business acumen and his over-
confidence, he and the venture
capitalists couldn’t close their
differences on issues of royalties,
compensation, and ownership. If
his overconfidence hadn’t mud-
died his judgment, he could have
made a deal with one of the ven-
ture capitalists and been a mega-
millionaire by now.
Illustrating Example:
Job Interview
Many otherwise qualified indi-
viduals fail at job interviews be-
cause they become overconfident
and drop their guard. They re-
lax and say things off the top of
their heads instead of what could
resonate with interviewers.
A university was looking for a
VP/CIO. S applied and was invited
for an interview. It went really well,
so S was asked for a second inter-
view. He already felt overqualified
for the position, and the second
interview re-enforced this opin-
ion. After learning that he was
the only person recommended
by the recruitment committee, he
became cocky and overconfident
and didn’t guard his thoughts.
Then came the last interview
event—dinner with the university
president, his wife, and his close
advisors. During the dinner, one
person said to S, “We all work as
a team and are loyal to the presi-
dent. We expect the same of you.”
Without thinking, he responded
immediately, saying, “My loyalty
would be with the university, not
with the president.” Needless to
say, he didn’t get an offer from
the university. He should have
said “sure” if he wanted an offer;
then it would have been up to him
whether to accept it.
W was invited for an interview
for a senior position at a large
non-profit organization. The first
day went very well: he had ob-
served that many programs and
projects needed improvement
and was confident that he knew
exactly how to help. On the sec-
ond day, he got overconfident and
was anxious to show off his astute
observations and problem-solving
skills, so he didn’t think clearly
that he would need to phrase his
comments very skillfully lest he
bruise people’s egos. During the
exit interview with the president,
S told him how one of his pet proj-
ects could be improved. Instead
of impressing him, W apparently
rubbed him the wrong way and
failed to get an offer.
I
n the next issue, we’ll look at
the other side of being self-
smart: being career smart. The
common thread to the mantras
we’ll learn is the importance of
seeking out an organization and
a specialty where your strength
gives you the opportunity to be on
a career fast track.
Wushow “Bill” Chou, an IEEE fel-
low, is the chair of IT Professional’s
advisory board and professor emeritus
at North Carolina State University. His
research interests include Internet, soft-
ware development, Web-based learning,
and IT management. Chou has a PhD in
electrical engineering and computer sci-
ence from the University of California,
Berkeley. Contact him at chou@ncsu.
edu.