Whenever there’s a sudden improvement in your performance, because of a change of strategy…should you mention it to your boss?
Well, I like to keep my work habits private…but I don’t want my boss to think my sudden improvement occurred because I worked harder, and I was being lazy previously. I have not been working harder, but I’ve been working smarter.
Explain if asked. If you quickly drop back down to your earlier level of productivity they may never notice the surge. Otherwise bring it up at review time.
It really depends on the situation. It would be great for some bosses, others would just ask you why you didn’t do that before. If in doubt, follow** DrFidelius **advice, or don’t mention it all if not asked.
Speaking as one who never blew his own horn, in retrospect I would taday. I would call attention to any accomplishment I made. I look back at one instance where I was hired as a co- manager to a dept that had been having serious problems for several years. I had it straightened out and performing beautifully in less than 60 days. My Co-manager who had failed miserably in the last 5 years was given full credit and promoted. My plan was to get him up to speed so I could move on, kind of backfired on me.
Does your boss know how you were doing it before? Did he train you how to do it? If yes to either or both, I would say something like “I meant to mention to you, I figured out (whatever) and it made things much easier and faster.” Maybe it would help someone else too.
Tell him you saw that new poster they put up in the break room that said, “Work smarter, not harder”, and that it made all the difference in the world to you.
I don’t know why somebody didn’t come up with those posters years ago. We used to pay outside consultants big money to come in and direct Quality Team meetings about how to improve the business.
I wish I would have said, “A couple posters telling us to work smarter, not harder” would do it. We could have saved thousands on consultants. And lost productivity due to required meetings. Which we had to work overtime to catch back up on the work load.
When I though that shit had finally run it’s course, some son of a bitch came up with Six Sigma. Which put me off on the idea of gun control for good. 