Please don’t recommend this to other people

Internal recommendations (within your team) are not as innocent as they seem.

The suggestion box is closed.

They’re actually great ways to avoid owning responsibility. They’re speed bumps. They are harmfully harmless.  I know, they come from a good place, well-intentioned, informed, group-oriented, but they nearly always require consensus and inevitably lead to delays. To a busy manager, a recommendation means “hi, this now completely stops with you.”

Instead, give them something that lets them know it is moving forward with a good idea behind it.

“Here’s what I did” is much better than “I recommend” – unless you’re picking a university to attend or boarding a cruise ship, most of the decisions you’ll make aren’t huge and many are reversible. Just do the RIGHT thing. But don’t recommend unless you’re asked for a recommendation.

Recommendations sort of suck. DOING things is much better. The word forgiveness may contain just one more letter than permission, but will result in MANY fewer emails.

Don’t recommend someone read this blog post.

Instead, tell them to do something and let you know the results.