Find out who quietly fixed the thing
Something broke, then it didn't. Somebody did that, usually out of hours, and nobody has said anything to them.
Not rated yet
The BeingKind editorsPublished How this is written
Why it lands
Invisible work is invisible precisely when it succeeds. A migration that goes badly is a company-wide incident; one that goes well is a normal Tuesday, and the person who spent their Saturday on it gets the same silence as if they had done nothing. Over time that teaches people that the only way to be noticed is to let something fail first, which is a terrible thing to teach.
How
Find out who actually did it — ask, rather than thanking the team lead by default. Say what would have happened if they hadn't: “I know you did the failover on Saturday. Monday would have been a nightmare and it wasn't.”
Answer if you want. It changes which ideas are shown first.
Related
Answer the message you have been avoiding
The longer a reply is owed the harder it gets, and the person waiting has usually assumed something worse than the truth.
5 minutesFreeA friend1 person did this
Plan someone's first week, not their first day
Onboarding is concentrated in day one, which is the day nobody retains anything.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Invite the new family twice
The first invitation is often declined out of uncertainty. The second is the one that establishes it was real.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Learn to say their name properly
People with unfamiliar names spend their lives being mispronounced and told it does not matter.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Ask whether it can be repaired, before you buy it
One question at the point of purchase decides the next ten years of that object.
5 minutesFreeThe planet