Tag Archives: life lessons

December 11, 2014 · 12:02 pm

Sick Days

I feel like crap. I’m told that I sound that way too. Congestion in my chest has migrated up into my head and the pressure in my sinuses is killing me. It’s actually hard to keep my eyes focused as I’m trying to get this written.

I know you’ve been here too. Unless you live in a sterile environment like Howard Hughes, we all get a bit under the weather from time to time, especially when the seasons change. I’m going to keep this brief today.

While once in a while you and I can have a sick day, we can’t ever allow our businesses to do so. Sure, the people who are the faces of our enterprises get sick or fight with their significant other or have other problems. That’s when we encourage them to stay home, or at least take them away from dealing with customers until their physical or mental health returns.

Our customers and partners want to be able to count on us.  While they may be sympathetic to our personnel issues or to other things that can make a business “sick”, they aren’t going to be working with us for long if there is a chance that our illness will spread to them.  Obviously I’m not being literal.  But our problems can’t become their problems.

Thoughts?

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December 8, 2014 · 11:58 am

The Motivation Test

I spent some time over the weekend thinking about motives.  I’ll admit that I fall into the camp of people who tend to ascribe malevolent intent to many of the seemingly innocent things that happen to each of us each day.  I also admit that it’s misguided to do so.  As I wrote a few months back, people tend to be more stupid than they are evil.  Add oblivious to that list.  That, however, isn’t really today’s thought.

English: Human figure with thought bubbles

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My thinking led me to this.  What is important is that people do question why we do what we do as businesses and businesspeople.  They look at two things – actions and motives.  When our actions are tone-deaf or out of sync with someone’s desires, they let us know.  Maybe it’s by lack of purchase; maybe it’s via social media.  In those cases we can usually apologize, explain that we recognize the error of our previous course of action, acknowledge bad decision-making, and promise to do better.

Where we run into issues is when the consumer, partner, or employee looks at our motives.  Yes, they will do that in the course of receiving the aforementioned apology.  That’s where we can’t screw up.  I’ve found that people are very willing to forgive if your intentions were good even if your actions were wrong.  We get into much deeper and hotter water when our motives were as wrong as our actions.

It’s not about rationalization.  In many cases where we screw up, our actions can be rationalized but not justified. In fact, almost any action can be rationalized, but justification requires something more.  I think that something more is the underlying intentions – our motives.

I get that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and it’s important to act on those intentions.  When we screw up in so doing, the inevitable examination of those intentions needs to check out.   If we don’t pass that exam, we can’t possibly succeed at business.  You agree?

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November 25, 2014 · 2:06 pm

Thanks For Bad Bosses

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, many people take the time to reflect on the things for which they’re thankful. When I was managing a team, I was hopeful that I made the lists in my team’s minds since having a good supervisor can make the work day seem not like work at all.

What always struck me when I worked in large offices was that there are really bad bosses. I had a few and I was peers with quite a few more. I even supervised a couple although their skills got better fairly quickly or they moved on. That’s not to say that I never had great or even good bosses. I was lucky to have had many of them. But the bad ones really stood out, and in a weird way I give thanks for them as well since they provided daily examples of what NOT to do.

Why were they bad? More importantly, what can you take away as learnings from the suffering of their subordinates?  Well, first I always shook my head at the bosses who confused what they did with who they are.  The bad ones all had a sense of entitlement; the great ones felt like jut another teammate.  You can spot the great ones – they’re leaders and would be so even if they didn’t have the title.  People come to them for help and guidance.  Bad bosses get avoided like the plague.

Great bosses have people who work “with” them, not “for” them.  Listen carefully the next time a supervisor mentions someone on his staff for that word.  You might also think that a great boss is completely incompetent.  Every time something goes wrong in their area, it’s the boss who says they’re to blame.  That is because the great ones take blame for every bad event that occurs while giving as much credit as they can to members of their team.

Finally, you’ve heard the old truism that there’s no “I” in “team.”  Great bosses believe that and they make sure that every member of their staff gets it.

So how about it.  Are you as thankful as I am for all the bad bosses that show you the light of effective management, or have you been cursed with only great bosses in your life?

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