Do you c.a.r.e.?
My friend who last inspired the ‘leadersh*t’ story came up with another golden nugget, but this time he gave the overused ‘acronyms for people who can’t grasp concepts’ a run for their money:
C Cover
A A$$
R Retain
E Employment
Having had to grind my teeth through another pointless acronym-overdosed, unimaginative ‘motivational’ session some months back I found this refreshing and at least, entertaining. After all, my friend is in the coaching business and this was simply fitting.
This brings me to another interesting observation this week: if you hire an architect to build your house, and by that you literally expect the guy to do it, you can’t be upset if it doesn’t quite get finished on time or if the plumbing doesn’t work. A lot goes on in the synchronisation of a project and its success hinges on the actors who prop up the sound, lights and sell the tickets. It is too easy for a customer – whether internal or external – to say “there is something wrong” but most of the time they can never quite figure out where it went wrong. This is why the gun is never given to the customer, but is usually in the hands of the architect (provided they were actually around throughout the entire project, and not having a pina colada whilst having pushed their responsibilities on to a contractor).
Several years ago I had a customer who would get into the pub early doors, for a couple of pints and light banter. John (let’s call him that) was very unassuming, hardly fussy and always had something interesting to say. In as far as I knew, the man ran several businesses one of which was a modest consultancy. During a conversation about management and running businesses, John gave me advice I’ll never forget (amongst others):
“Anyone can point out problems; people are programmed to look for faults in others, but only a good leader is able to step up to the plate and solve them.”
Inevitably you can identify problems and complain about it – but if you can find a way to solve it, you will earn respect regardless of what your title is for that day, week, month, year. Life will always present you with problems and people will always come to you with them (anyone who tells you “I hired you to do X, don’t come to me with your problems” is a prick – period) so escapism is only going to demonstrate that you either don’t have what it takes to solve it with them, or you just don’t know what to do anyway. Refusal to act reflects apathy and lack of conviction, and therein part carelessness.
So do you and your employees care?
Melcontentious 