Don’t point out something wrong immediately
This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case.<p>The main insight for me was that yes, things can be &quot;wrong&quot; due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes.<p>But more often than not there is a good reason. Like:<p>* we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the only way to get it done for the deadline; we never got the time to fix it<p>* external system constraints (like legacy applications, legal&#x2F;certification requirements, ...)<p>* particular domain constraints that you might not be familiar with, and that only make sense if you know the details<p>* important senior engineer X designed this and no one had the guts to call it out as flawed<p>* the company paid a lot of money for product Y, so we just had to use it<p>* a manager read a blog post on how technique Z is awesome, so he made us do it this way<p>* political infighting between parts of an organisation (redundant work, refusal to work together, deliberate sabotage)<p>* ...<p>But you will usually not hear these reasons right away. And being critical can easily put others in a defensive stance and make it very hard to get that information at all.<p>So my best tip is: if you spot something &quot;wrong&quot;, don&#x27;t react immediately and <i>don&#x27;t interrupt</i>. Let the other party finish. Make a note. Gather more information. Ask why it was done this way, who is responsible, if it has been effective or not, and whatever else could be relevant.<p>You can still be as critical as required later.