I was driving on a rather big avenue a couple of days ago, when the car in front slammed the breaks for no apparent reason.
A few moments later, I realized that the driver did that in order to allow another car, on the opposite track flow, to turn.
The problem was, of course, that we had the right of the way. I could see through his windshield that the road in front was completely empty and so I had no reason to expect him to break as suddenly as he did.
He tried to do a good thing, but his action was nothing short of mindless.
This reminds me of an issue that I had in the past, whereby a very good employee of mine was sort of taken advantage of by other managers, who noticed this individual’s good will and kept offloading work on his desk.
The problem of course was, that on one hand he was too “innocent” to deny work and on the other, because he didn’t let me know of this additional workload, he kept either missing deadlines, or telling me that he needed more time for things I knew could be done fairly easily.
When I found out what was going on and asked why he didn’t notify me of this to intervene and “protect” him, he said that he took the initiative to help the other managers because he thought he was doing a good thing for the business. Just like the driver in front of me thought he was doing a good deed by slamming the breaks and letting the car on the opposite flow pass.
Moral of the story: Being able to take the initiative and act autonomously is gold. But, being reliably predictable, is platinum.