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For Women in Business who want to take Scary Big Risks and anyone who wants to be a better Leader this afternoon

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My Plan Failed But It Was Still a Good Plan

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During a warm spell in February 2014, I took a break from work and went out to transplant a rose bush that was about to die in its old location.  I had selected the location carefully:  enough sun but not too hot and dry, good soil, all the right things.  I had thought through the plan and the location.  It was a good plan and it should have worked.  But it didn’t.

My well-planned work failed.

I felt no guilt that my plan didn’t work.  I felt a little tired from the care I’d taken, but it didn’t bother me one bit that the plan didn’t work.

But it was still a good plan.

Just because the plan didn’t work doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good plan.

The test of a plan’s goodness is not whether it works.  It’s whether you thought it all the way through, seeing the the hard parts, the possible problems, the consequences, and the barriers and pre-planning answers to them all.

What do you think when a plan fails?  Do you still believe it was a good plan

Do This If You Want Your Boss To Have Your Back

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Do you want the support of your boss?  Want him or her to have your back?  We all want that, don’t we?

Rick the Boss used to tell me, “I don’t care if you take risks as long as your paperwork’s done.”  He meant that as long as my timesheets and expense reports were in and approved (which meant that rules had been obeyed and minimum billed hours met), as long as I was clear on which critical rules to follow and was following them, I was free to take big risks.

Support for Big Scary Risks

As long as I wasn’t asking him to excuse me or cover for me on the fundamentals he expected me to respect, he was saying he’d have my back and support me on the scary-big sales opportunities I was good at.  As long as my paperwork was done.

It’s A Transaction

I came to understand that it wasn’t a matter of Rick trusting me, trusting that I could succeed at scary-big sales; it was a transaction between us.  Are you taking care of your boss on the fundamentals so he can have your back on the scary-big stuff?

Are you?  In what ways could you cover the fundamentals better so that your boss can have your back?   Please Comment.

 

 

 

The One Thing Your Teammates Want the Most

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I often remind clients that the one true need of their teammates is that they want to be proud of themselves and truly proud of their work.

Our Job As Leaders

Our job as leaders is to help our teammates find that pride.  Twice in the last two days, the same thing was said by others.  On the PBS program, “New Recruits“, an American philanthropy sends new college grads to third-world countries to organize startups to sell eco products. A Kenyan businessman takes under his wing one of the new graduates who’s having no luck at all starting his little company or selling his products.  The Kenyan gentleman tells the graduate, “Remember one thing.  People want to be proud of the thing they’re involved in.”

Ken Blanchard’s First Rule About Teams

In the Ken Blanchard book Gung Ho, Blanchard’s first rule in creating enthusiastic high-performing teams is “the work must be worthwhile”.  Our work should be worth something, something truly worth our effort.  We want work that makes us proud to be part of it.  The job of a leader is to find the worth of the job and make it plain to the rest of us.

Do you do that as a leader?  Do you think it’s important?

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