Committed Complaints? Good for You!

The US election season is now underway. That means there will be 18 months of complaining about the candidates, then we can switch back to our usual complaints about the weather, TV programming, and people who eat pizza with a fork. Those are all examples of “uncommitted complaints”, because we usually are not going to do anything about them. Except for voting – please do that, OK?

A “committed complaint” is one where you are committed to taking action to get it resolved. If you have a complaint about something you ordered in a restaurant and you tell the waiter or restaurant manager about it, then that was a committed complaint. If you just gripe to your dinner companion as you walk out to the parking lot, that’s an uncommitted complaint.

Every organization has a unique menu of uncommitted complaints. Here are 3 of my favorites:

1. We don’t have enough resources to do the job;
2. We tried that and it didn’t work; and
3. “They” don’t _________ (fill in the blank: care, listen, help, etc.).

Nobody ever has “enough” resources; either stop complaining about it or make a request. I met a manager who took this on and itemized the specific results her office was supposed to produce. She put the time estimate for completing each task, totaled the hours, and made a note of how many staff she had to do the work. Point made: there weren’t enough staff hours to get things done on time.

She went an extra mile, however, and spelled out the value and benefits of getting each job done: who would get the results and what difference it would make to them. Then she sent it to her two bosses with a note that said, “If you will provide me with an extra 28 staff-hours per week, I can get this done. I hope you can make this happen before the end of this month so we can get back on our timeline. Thank you.”

She got the staff-hours. “I learned the power of a well-designed request,” she said. “And I told my staff to quit griping about resources. They helped design that request, and now they need to own the results.”

The same is true for the other 2 uncommitted requests above. You tried that and it didn’t work? How about itemizing what exactly didn’t work and how it could work today? Then make a request for what you need to be successful.

And the complaint about “they” – well, we’re going to hear a lot of that for the next 18 months. Let’s save our breath and find something positive to say about something, somewhere in the world. Or get out there and fix something that matters to us. Actually, you probably already do that. But do consider passing these thoughts along in order to reduce the amount of gas between now and Election Day.