What do you do when people intentionally disobey rules and regulations? Get out the company manual, reinstate capital punishment and subject the violators to non-stop torture? I don’t think that would be the solution. Besides, pretty soon, you will have the Human Rights advocates banging on your doors. But you can deal with the problem if you use a little creativity and understand a little bit of employee empowerment, as the following story will clearly explain.
Asking: “Who caused this to happen?” and asking: “How did I get myself into this situation?” are two different things. One fixes the blame the other one fixes the problem. Some people are experts in blame-storming and this is why they never recover. Others learn from mistakes and this is why they succeed. The question you ask determines the outcome for your life.
You and I know very well that resistance to change is always one of the inhibitors of progress. And this point is best illustrated by a historical event that happened in the field of basketball. From the Signs of the Times courtesy of Pacific Press comes this beautiful story.
Do you know that on the night of December 30, 1936, a crowd of more than 17,500 turned out at the old Madison Square Garden in New York City, to see Long Island University, the nation’s number-one basketball team with a 43-game winning streak, oppose Stanford, the defending Pacific Coast Conference champion. Stanford ended LIU’s winning streak with a 45-11 victory, but something more important happened.
Robert was so excited about his promotion to Vice President of the company he worked for and kept bragging about it to his wife for weeks on end. Finally she couldn’t take it any longer, and told him, “Listen, it means nothing, they even have a vice-president of peas at the grocery store!”"Really?” he said. Not sure if this was true or not, Tom decided to call the grocery store. A clerk answers and Tom says, “Can I please talk to the Vice President of peas?” The clerk replies, “Canned or frozen?”
Positions? Job titles?Does it mean much these days? To some people they sure do.
I was doing my 2nd day training of our 2 day John Maxwell Leadership Workshop and Seminar to some of the budding leaders for a very huge business organization and I talked about good leaders being big enough to apologize for their mistakes and earn the respect of his or her people.
Yes Virginia, even bosses make mistakes.
My friends Jimmy and Susan Thai love the outdoors. Together with their friends and business partners, they run a chain of first class outdoor travel gear and from time to time would bring their company people to do outdoor activities like mountain climbing, trekking, hiking etc. Every time I observe Jimmy talk about his outdoor activities and adventures I can see his eyes brighten up.
We are so different Jimmy and I. My own personal travel adventures would cover airport terminals to hotel ballrooms and bedrooms and back to airport terminals again. Not exactly “outdoorish” I would say. And so I got a little curious about mountain climbing. While watching a video of some mountain climbers and their attempt at climbing Mt. Everest, I learned some important lessons in life.
A security man has a dream that the plane his boss is supposed to take the next day is going to crash. When he wakes up he calls his boss at home and tells him. His boss decides not to take the plane. Sure enough the plane crashes. The relieved boss calls the young man to his office and gives him a reward — and then fires him. Slightly confused the man asks why. The boss replies, “You were sleeping on the job.”
There are good bosses and then there are bad bosses. Most bosses I know try their best to be good but the current working scenario just could not afford them the luxury. This I will explain.
I have stories about politics and this is one of them.
Two men were stopped by a TV newswoman doing street interviews about the upcoming presidential primary election.
“I’m not voting for any of the candidates,” the first man said. “I don’t know any of them.”
Dr. John C. Maxwell is a very prolific author. Our company Inspire Leadership Consultancy has been licensed to do his leadership training programs here in our country. I would love to share with you an article Maxwell wrote many years ago. And as the whole country prepares to go to the polls, I hope that the new set of elected officers would learn from the lessons presented here. Maxwell writes:
Before the NBA ever heard of Shaquille O’Neal, Dikembe Mutombo or Tim Duncan; back before anyone knew the name Hakeem Olajuwon; in the days before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ruled the hardwoods, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell changed the nature of professional basketball with the way they played the center position.
Tom Peters is one business guru who does not mince words. I remember attending his seminar many years ago when I saw him and heard him rants about the need to “Innovate or Evaporate.” His background is engineering and therefore logic, analysis, synthesis, mathematics and measurement are important to him. And to read his latest orange colored thick and pricy hard bound book entitled: “Little Big Things” becomes quite of a shocker to me.
Peters says that the one of the most important things for business people to know today is that “Soft is hard and hard is soft.”
