Chen-hsiu Huang's Blog

Dear Toastmaster members, good evening,

I know people do like surprise, we all like surprise; but tonight I'm not to going to give you any surprise. Because today my topic is "No Surprise." In last Toastmaster meeting on October 25th, I heard Raymond Yu's talk about "How to get along with your boss". His speech reminds me about a true story happened in my work a few weeks ago. So I would like to share this experience with my dear Toastmaster members.

The fact is that, I work in the so-called IT industry. Projects come and go, and we're always busy all the time. Sometimes when we get too many things at hand, we tend to be careless. It's very easy to neglect those things that are important but not immediately urgent. So we just postponed those tasks again and again, finally, it blows up. Boom!

When everything gets out of control, actually you're giving your boss a surprise, a big surprise. Chinese people all like to become managers. But before you become a good manager, you have to learn how to be well managed. As a manager, all you have to do is not only arrange schedule, manage tasks, but also manage risks. And the last one, "manage risks" is the most critical point to evaluate a manager. So if you want to be well managed, the first goal you have to achieve is "being expectable". If you name it, you have to finish it. No discount, and no exaggeration. As long as you can be expectable, you're also trustable. Your boss can trust your promise and expect your capability. Only in this way, he can manage any potential risks that could be happened. So the most important thing is, do not surprise your boss, or your boss will definitely get crazy.

Of course we have two kinds of surprise, good surprise and bad surprise. In our daily life, we all like good surprise. When something happened wonderful, or amazing beyond our expectation, we call it good surprise. Good surprise is a kind of sugar candy that can enrich our life. But when we talking about management, good surprise is not so good. Only no surprise is the best. As for the bad surprise, well, if you dare to surprise your boss with a bad surprise, you will get yourself into very big trouble.

Before ending my speech, I can show you a good example about "no surprise". In last Toastmaster meeting, Allen praised me for my first ice-breaking speech. Allen evaluated my speech as fluently and well organized. But if I show up tonight as: "To..to…ni-ni, night, I'm … hmm … going …. to … to". That's a bad surprise. So tonight I still present my speech within the same expectation, that's what I'm saying, "No surprise!"