Want great ideas,
great products,
great employees?
Then don’t punish concept failures.
Gil Schwartz in the April edition
of Men’s Health writes
“Managers who punish well-intentioned failure
eventually suck the greatness out
of their people.”
There really is no need for the big stick.
The people brave enough
to head a risky project,
are usually the same people
harshest on themselves.
Plus looking like a jacka$$
in front of the company
is punishment enough.
Hugh at Gaping Void
talks about his one thing…
“One of the smartest moves I ever made
was to figure out that making money
indirectly off the cartoons
was far easier than trying
to make the money directly.
If I could teach gapingvoid readers just one thing,
that would be it.”
There are opportunities to make improvements,
to build wealth in every industry,
you merely have to uncover it.
One of my favorite phrases is
“If you don’t buy a ticket, you can’t win.”
I feel better when I have
a possibility of having things happen.
Since deciding to focus on writing,
I’ve always had a contest entry,
a manuscript to be edited or
query letter out there.
If I didn’t, I knew I had no chance of being published.
Ovid put it more elegantly
“Let your hook be always cast,
in the pool where you least expect it,
there will be a fish.”
Send out a sales letter today.
Give your product a chance.
We all have our routines.
We buy the same coffee
at the same Starbucks
at the same time.
But routines can be dangerous
because if all you are known for
is completing a certain type of task
or providing a certain product,
that is all you will be considered for.
In Stanley Bing’s “Sun Tzu Was A Sissy”,
he points out…
“Your enemy is presenting you
with new options and challenges every day.
If you respond in a wholly expected way each time,
you will become predictable,
and a predictable enemy is much easier to defeat
than one who treats his adversaries
to a surprise on a regular basis.”
I recently attended a writing seminar
where the host offered a
“free thank you” for attending.
It was a dictionary of terms online.
Useful?
Yes.
Did we consider it a thank you?
No.
Why?
Because it was information
available to everyone
and not only that,
but she had us find it ourselves.
Did she give us the URL?
No, she explained,
it is long and complicated.
Google for the key words instead.
It should be the second one listed.
Did we need a password?
Nope.
Was it even her information?
No, again.
This was not a thank you.
This was a resource.
So how did I handle that new assignment?
The one where I was unfamiliar with
both the task and the industry?
I had a weekend to prepare.
First I sent out an email to buddies,
looking for someone in the industry or
someone experienced in cash controls documentation.
I stopped at the library where
I loaded up on industry related books.
By the time I received the response I needed,
I had absorbed enough lingo and key concepts
to not sound like an idiot.
With the books and the interviews,
I walked into the workplace Monday morning,
confident that I could add value.
Was I the ideal candidate?
Hell no.
But I got the job done.
I mailed a letter this week to a loved one.
Since I mailed a similar letter the week before
(and ended up overpaying the postage),
I didn’t go to the fuss of weighing it again.
Simply stuck two stamps instead of one
(over paying the postage, I thought, once again)
and sent it off.
A couple days later it got returned
with a sticker on it,
asking me to add two cents worth of postage
(note to self: pink bracelets are heavier
than the identical ones in blue).
And you read that right.
Two cents!
The sticker attached was worth that much.
Someone was following the policy
to the letter (literally).
Look at your own policies.
Is there any flexibility for borderline cases?
If not, it could cost you…
goodwill, customers, money…
A huge entertainment venue was opening soon.
The owners hired a specialist to come in and
set up controls and accounting systems.
This specialist needed help
so they called me in.
I told the owners up front that
since I had no industry experience and
hadn’t formally documented controls in a decade,
I was not the right person for the job.
They insisted on hiring me anyway (only for a week).
The control they assigned me?
The all important cash.
There are two key lessons in this story.
One is if a specialist is hired to do
a task outside of her core strengths,
she is no better, yet higher paid than a junior jammer.
The other is to not delegate
the most important task to a junior jammer.
A local business held an event recently.
The press came,
the press received their goodie bags (press bags),
the press had a good time, and
the press wrote long stories on the event.
Then instead of using the local business’ name,
the location of the event was identified quite deliberately
as “a local bookstore.”
A President of a certain country visited
a U.S. University recently.
Before he even said a word,
before he could even thank his hosts
for the invitation,
he was treated to a berating of his policies and actions.
A berating that went on and on,
that had to be translated so
he could be insulted in his own language.
The bookstore will likely never treat
the press so well again.
The next guest of the University is likely right now
rethinking his or her decision.
Being a bad guest or a bad host
does not hurt others as much as it hurts yourself.
In the August edition of Reader’s Digest,
the first American Idol Kelly Clarkson
talks about going to the record label
and fighting for her songs.
“The song I wrote that they hated
the most was “Because Of You.”
I fought and fought for it,
it became successful and
they finally got behind it.”
I have yet to launch a product
that I didn’t have to fight for first.
Resistance is part of the process.