Over the last few weeks I've become hyper sensitive to comments stating the obvious on various social networks and in general conversation. Rather than dive into a general rant about the implicit insult to one's intelligence, the appalling perception it makes in the minds of those that recognise you are stating the obvious; born from the potential disdain, apathy and lack of insight of the individual doing the stating and finally the waste of time of this activity; I'd like suggest an alternative approach.

I have to apologise in advance here, as the alternatives I'm going to suggest are obvious and I'll also throw in some obvious analysis as well, just for good measure. However it seems to me that a large segment of the population does need to be gently reminded.

On one level stating the obvious is a little bit like pointing out unusual physical mannerisms in someone that cannot control them. It's somewhat like pointing out to someone that they have a lisp, in front of a crowd of professional colleagues. I find this habit, and it does seem to habit in some people, incredibly tiresome.

Of course, we are all guilty of it, so here are some tips to avoid it, or at least if you must engage in at this level of discourse, I hope to show you how stop your self looking even more stupid when you do so :).

If you're moaning to your manager about a problem 95% of the time you are stating the obvious to him/her

There are, on rare occasion, deep seated problems in the enterprise that no one, except you, is aware of. Such opportunities are rare gifts that you can exploit to further your career and generate value for your colleagues and the business. But even in this case, simply alerting others to the issue as soon as you are aware of it is not the most productive approach.

Both in this case and in the far more common case, where almost everyone is aware of the issue, the best approach is to offer solutions that you have, to some extent, already furthered. It's no good to merely express an opinion that some decision was wrong, or that some process is performing badly. Nor is it of any use to say it can be fixed with some superficial reference to a shiny new technology that you've been meaning to learn for a while. In fact, if there is one thing that bothers me even more than stating the obvious, its the superficial quip that sometimes follows the inane observation, regarding how to solve the problem.

An inexperienced or incompetent manger may well act and make some sort of decision based on the poor council that you just provided to them, but any half decent manager will either ignore you or tell you go off and come up with an actionable plan. If you don't have any reasonable suggestions for resolving an issue, then you are essentially moaning. That isn't a very productive use of shareholder capital.

Better yet than an actionable plan, is to demonstrate some progress. Break up the problem into smaller chunks and actually attempt to fix one of the problems, after all isn't that what you're being paid for? This is really the kind of behaviour I expect to see at Associate level in any given global enterprise. At Assistant Vice President level you really should be aiming to have resolved much of the problem before having escalated. The best way to stay at AVP level is to continue pointing out problems that either cannot be resolved or that you have no intention of fixing.

If you continue to insist on stating the obvious, then at least have the courtesy to tell us you are going to do so in the first instance and try to add some humour to the communication, post a relevant meme, find a good quotation, make some sort of effort reduce the awkward misery that you are about to inflict on us.