Don't know everything

“Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.” Alice Thomas Ellis

I had one of those déjà vu moments last week where I found myself in a constantly recurring set of conversations with the same theme. These tend to happen a lot (to me anyway) where I no sooner get off the phone with one person and another calls with the same issue.

In this one I had been chatting with a buddy who started a new job last year and is loving life. The company is doing well and he is happily a part of that success. He happens to be a talented sales exec who in his previous job had been through the classic start up dilemma where the founder just could not, no matter how much he tried and promised, ever turn sales over to the talented sales exec he had recruited to come help him. After two years of frustration when he got the call from a company offering him a new life he took it.

The next call a few hours later was from another friend, also a talented sales exec, who is suffering the same founders control dilemma. After being hired to kick the company up a notch my friend cannot make any headway due to the founder’s meddling, tinkering, procrastination, directional changes, criticism and about-faces. Coincidentally, my friend has just been contacted by an ex-colleague who now runs a company and is looking for a top-notch sales exec.

Hmmm….wonder how this will play out?

Few things slow down momentum more than constantly changing things without real merit or purpose. It’s called “rearranging the deck chairs”. Additionally, not allowing the expert people that you purposely go out and get to do what they know how to do (and you probably don’t) is wasting everyone’s time.

Most times this happens because a “leader” can’t stand for things to not be done exactly to their vision, style, font and color. They’re OK with change as long it was their idea.

If you’ve gone to the trouble to hire smart, experienced, diverse professionals to help make your company rock why would you constantly slow them down because they say “tow-MAY-toe” and you say “tow-MAH-toe”. It’s one of the toughest things entrepreneurs wrestle with since no one is ultimately as smart as they are.

Well Columbo, let me tell you something. Yes they are. In fact, in their area of expertise they’re smarter. Be careful or you’ll find yourself the monkey at the top of the tree looking down at all the smiling faces. Just remember what the monkeys below you see when they look up.

The books are full of failed companies who couldn’t grow past the founder’s reach. If it’s your company, you’d better pay attention. If you’re in one….you’d better pay attention.

Hey, do you still make that killer meatloaf?

“All marriages are mixed marriages.” Chantal Saperstein

I was running with two friends – both women- and they were talking about a couple who split after their kids went off to college. Note, they were talking; I was trying not to die.

According to the story he was a businessman, she a homemaker. After 25 years she found planning menus so he could eat upon arrival less than challenging. Kind of like the movie Pleasantville. She went back to school, met more interesting (and probably younger) men and eventually got remarried. He also got remarried, but not to another “housewife” but to a successful and somewhat independent business woman.

My friends were somewhat mystified by this since they assumed he would want another June Cleaver. I wasn’t and immediately told them why it made sense. Well, not immediately since I couldn’t talk due to gagging my way up a hill. But once the run was over and I had recovered I told them why.

Why? Because there are a lot of people who only think of people as they were when they first met them.

I have a love/hate relationship with going back to my home town. Although I love seeing family and friends I also run into people who only remember me as a goofy kid with big ears and a speech impediment. They don’t realize I’m now a goofy middle-aged man with big ears and a speech impediment.

More importantly I’ve known too many managers in the business world who pigeonhole people because they can only see them as the “clerk”, “technician” or “receptionist” they hired. It’s as if they cannot grasp the concept that people are capable of learning, growing and evolving. I’ve had this happen to me and have fought it in two ways. One, work my butt off to get in a position where that original manager now works for me and then go to great lengths to make their life miserable, or two, change companies and work my butt off to get my new company in a position to acquire my old company so I can make that original manager’s life miserable.

Kidding aside, sometimes you have to go to another place (or person) to not be recognized for what you once were. This guy couldn’t see his wife as anything but what she once was. But with someone new he found something else. Now, the problem will come when New Wife wants to escape the professional world and kick back at home. He may not handle that any better.

The key in any long-term relationship – personal or professional – is to recognize both what people are as well as what they can be. It's rewarding in both scenario's to be a part of people as they change.

Win alone, Lose together

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." Richard Feynman

Hanging out with a buddy over the weekend he was talking about a colleague who has made an art form out of pulling the owner of their company into deals that he’s about to lose. Not necessarily to save them, but to not be held accountable when they go belly up. The owner apparently holds himself in such high regard that he assumes any prospect that says no to him is unsalvageable. Conversely any solid deal that he has a high probability of winning he will keep the owner totally out of sight of for fear of not getting credit for the win.

Genius? Madness?

Some of both probably but he certainly understands his environment and that is a lesson we can all pay attention to these days.

Now more than ever winning is a team game. Actually it always has been but good times and growing markets mask mistakes (and enlarged egos).

I was emailed today of the plight of a guy I was unfortunate enough to have worked with in the past. His businesses have failed, his once impressive wealth is gone and probably saddest of all no one cares.

Actually that’s not true, many of us care. And we’re lifting a glass to toast the event.

So listen and listen carefully. I try to make points in most of these rants that have a salient and practical lesson. Winning is not an individual event. Hell, individual events are not individual events. Tennis stars, runners and golfers don’t win alone, they have coaches and trainers. Every successful person has a support group that “allows” their achievement.

It you are the person who thinks all success is solely because of you and your (fill in the blank here) – genius, talent, personality, effort, ingenuity, passion, slyness, et al – then please, now, extract your engorged head from your ample ass.

Times are tough and going to get tougher. Winning is tough and going to get tougher. Quit being Terrell Owens and start being Hines Ward. If you don’t get the NFL analogy then try this, quit being a self-centered, inwardly-focused, butthead and start being a “if the team wins, I win” component of success.

Because the next glass of Champaign that’s raised, may be to you…..