Panning for Gold.
Receiving a complaint is like having a bucket of river water and sand thrusted at you.
The complaint is the bucket.
The water - emotion.
The sand - stuff you already know.
You are a prospector.
Panning for gold.
Mistaken Respect.
The military has a saying: ‘You salute the rank and not the person.’
People respect the office and thus the person.
A bad boss mistakes respect for their office, particularly one created by government or the church, for respect or even admiration for them.
A bad boss will pretend to defend their office and those who appointed them, when really they’re protecting their ego.
The Lie.
Spend enough time around a bad boss and eventually you will witness:
The Lie.
Usually drawn forth by the neutral inquiries of a disinterested but informed third party.
The bad boss is doing their usual bad boss thing of saying a lot without saying anything.
Then the question comes whose truthful answer will put the bad boss in a bad light.
The bad boss knows you know the truth.
Thus - the long pause as the bad boss does a quick mental calculation of the pros and cons of telling the truth and being shamed by their inquisitor - or telling a lie and you being a witness.
The bad boss always chooses the Lie.
‘Yes,’ they answer, when you know the answer is ‘No’. There’s no fudging the Lie when it comes.
The bad boss chooses their reputation with third parties over their reputation with you because the bad boss assumes you’ve stuck around this long, you’ll overlook and forgive the Lie. The bad boss counts on you buying the story that the Lie was necessary to protect the organisation that you rely on to pay your mortgage.
Neither you nor the bad boss will ever speak of the Lie.
But know this.
The bad boss routinely lies.
Including about you.
Immunity.
As few as three, two, or even one person can poison a team, department, or entire organisation of thousands.
Thus, people bring a natural protective suspicion, resistance, and immunity to the new person.
This organisational immune system lies in wait for them.
Which is why the innovator, change maker, improver, and genius find it so hard to rescue dysfunction.
Clickety Clack.
The difference between a good boss and a bad boss is the difference between an author and a typist.
Babble.
You can tell a cohesive team, workplace, or organisation by its language.
People working in sync with each other develop a common language.
That’s why the military has its unique vernacular. Each unit or service may have a bit of its own accent twang. But everyone understands everyone else because they must or people die.
There’s a crispness and economy among those in defence born from two necessities: accuracy and urgency.
You can also tell a group of egos jostling for attention by their fragmented, appropriated language. Noisy, meaningless buzzwords, slogans, cliches, and jargon.
Babbling.
Everybody talking. Nobody listening.
A Minute Denied.
Every teacher, school business administrator, and Principal should have a large photo behind their desk showing the entire school community.
A parent seeking the Principal’s or teacher’s intervention in an issue affecting their child should know that every minute they take, is a minute denied to every one of those in the photo.
First Things First.
No point working on team bonding, communication skills, scoping personality types, or difficult conversations until you know they know the rules of your game.
No deep diving until you’ve measured the depth of the pool.
Caution: Shallow Water.
Don’t expect workers to engage in any consultant deep-dives once they’ve witnessed the boss randomly drain the pool.
A Quarter of Half.
Research by the Covey Institute found that only half of workers know what the strategy of their organisation is.
Of these, only 25% could answer how they personally could contribute to the company strategy in their daily work.
Meaning - for every 100 workers, only 12 are translating strategy back to behaviour.
This has echoes of Price’s Law that the square root of people in any group does half the work.
Coincidence? I think not.
Mistake Towards the Enemy.
There is the mistake which comes through daring, what I call a mistake towards the enemy, in which you must always sustain our commanders, by sea, land or air. There are mistakes from the safety first principle, mistakes of turning away from the enemy; and they require a far more acid consideration." - Sir Winston Churchill
In good decision making, the ‘enemy’ is ignorance.
Better to make a mistake following a good decision making process, than from the safety of positional power or inaction.
Three. Three. Three. Three.
Acknowledge receipt of a complaint within three days.
Undertake to resolve it within three weeks.
Allow a maximum of three appeals.
Apply lessons within three months.
Complaints Reveal What We Want.
Organisations spend lots of money trying to identify and refine what customers, clients, employees or the market want.
Complaints define what we want.
Admired.
I walk past the $400,000 Audi rotating on an elevated platform in the middle of the mall.
Shoppers - their arms laden with sale bags and small children - stop and gaze up at the gleaming luxury car.
One in ten thousand of those passing by could afford it.
I wonder why the Audi marketing people think this is their demographic.
Later, I work it out.
It’s not the ten thousand Audi is marketing to. We are just props in its campaign.
It’s the one in ten thousand - seeing us admiring the car - buys it to be admired driving it.
Amused and Horrified.
It’s always amused and horrified me how people harness virtue to conceal the vices they practise.
Public v Private.
We gather at the feet of the Lectern Leader and publicly smile and nod and clap at every asinine utterance.
We privately hope they leave us alone.
We get word of the Authentic Leader and publicly express cynicism and disbelief at their promises.
While privately cheering them on.
We Can See Our Possible Futures.
We think there is no way to predict the consequences of our choices.
Not true.
We are surrounded by guides, maps, case studies, precedents, slow motion replays, and crystal balls.
Other people.
Real life family, friends, acquaintances, books, stories, the media, songs, poetry, and our imagination are full of people making or who have made choices like ours. All are teachers.
We think that ‘love thy neighbour’ is some idealistic call to sacrifice ourselves to another.
Not true.
Love thy neighbour also calls us to seek out, acknowledge and be grateful for the Us in those around us - past, present, and future. Who serves to show us how we may be - good and bad - through the behaviour of another. Another who may be less or more fortunate than us.
Any option available to us can find its match in the options chosen and the consequences faced by another.
Thus ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ becomes ‘love those who face trials and tribulations and go before you that you may learn from them. Love them for their sacrifice. Love them as you would love your wisest teacher.
And remember:
In your decisions - someone may be watching you.
So make them well.
Make them with Love.
Let Them Float By.
We can only find the time to go upstream and prevent the bodies falling in - if we’re prepared to let some float by.
Another reason why Real Leaders are rare.