Do You Jockey Your Business Out Of Sinc?

Lots Of Employees

I have worked with a few thousand people in my lifetime of employment.  Most of the associates, peers, superiors and subordinates I have spent sharing working hours with have proven that one thing is for sure.  For sure most everybody has a strong need to control the space around them.  Very few of those thousands are submissive at work.  Most people go to work with some kind of idea about how they will do what they are expected to do.  It might be subconscious in nature, but most people do what they want to do.  Rarely does someone go to work and do what they are 'told' to do.  That ain't accepted very well.  Most leaders of good organizations have learned how to get their people to do what they want them to do in a very creative fashion.  Followers are hard to lead and leaders are hard to teach how to follow.

Teamwork is often times more of a cliche' than it is a reality.  True teamwork rarely comes to an organization.  Bumps, fears and emotions find their own set of gravity and enter into the holes of our work places and present the leaders with a set of challenges they prefer not to see.  Most of the people who go to work are very much interested in controlling their own work activities.  They usually despise having someone else tell them what to do on a constant basis.  It irritates them.

Most employees are only nice at work because they know they may have a difficult time finding a better job in the marketplace.  Very few people find job hunting a fun process.  They hate job hunting and no income more than they hate how they are treated at work.  As a result, most employees get really creative in how they make it look good that they are accomplishing the right kind of stuff in the most efficient manner.  The truth is, they are not performing as well as they truly can perform.  This statement includes myself.  I will only produce that which serves me well enough to do.  I am one of those humans.

Some of the most troubling challenges a business model will face come from the leaders of that business model.  My experience reveals more challenges of a serious nature that plague a business model and keep it from good success usually come from the leaders in charge.  Rarely do the big problems come from the staff of employees.  Employees do not hold the most accountable issues in their realm of responsibilities.  As a result, they rarely produce the most serious problems.  Owners and managers are the most common source for the largest issues that do the most damage.  Unfortunately, reviews of progress and performance corrections in most business models do not reflect this truth.  The leader of most business models is usually the owner.  The owners do not reprimand themselves.  They reprimand the employees.  This is very normal stuff.

I get amused when employees describe how this unfair practice persists.  Get over it.  Even employees do not reprimand themselves for the costly errors they produce.  The difference between the two sets of who causes the errors, is often times reflected by who is holding the wallet on the table.  Employees do not actually feel the direct monetary loss their error produced.  The owner picks up that tab.  A lot of employees miss this fact.

Good leadership comes from knowing how to reprimand, when to reprimand and why a reprimand should even occur.  This kind of good leadership is an art.  It is not a science.  If I were to offer a set of five rules to follow on this subject, one of those rules will be easily broken tomorrow in a situation that requires a whole new set of rules to come out well.  It is very subjective.  It is very slippery territory.  Good leadership is an art.  Most leaders do not know how to paint that kind of art.  As a result, their organizations continue to become plagued with failure issues involving employees and performance.

I like my boss.  I am not writing about my boss.  He has nothing to do with these truths.  If I did not like my boss, these truths would still remain.

Every work environment I have lead, been employed or watched has had some kind of major error occur that caused it some serious grief.  Every time those serious events occurred, it was the leader of that organization who created the mess.  Every single time.

This is a truth that has so much meaning and provides so much risk to so many organizations...it is amazing how it gets so swept under the rug.  Leaders fail to recognize that they are the most troubling reason for why their organizations fail.  The employees are not given large enough reins to turn the whole horse down the wrong path.  Only the leaders are allowed to steer the business in that fashion.

I am one of those leaders who has placed a lot of blame on the employees I hired.  Get serious.  I hired them.  I trained them.  I lead them.  I reviewed them.  I encouraged them.  I scheduled them.  I gave them keys, offices, computers, responsibilities, directions, ideas, suggestions, indications, body language, attitude, stubbornness, freedom, controls, vehicles, fuel, budgets and anything else I decided they needed to handle.  When they fouled up, I blamed them.  I tried to correct their paths.  I tried to manage how they moved.  I tried to tell them how to think.  Even then, when they fouled up, I blamed them.

I even worked on designing their schedules, their work duties, their performance levels and their follow-up routines.  Even then, when they fouled up, it was their fault.  I tried to 'jockey' every move they made.  I tried to encourage them to move exactly the way I would have moved.  I wanted them to 'jockey' their results in the same fashion I would 'jockey' my results.  I wanted to be the head 'jockey!'

If and when they fouled up, I would step in to 'jockey' the repair.  I did not want them to make deeper mistakes and foul up the repair, also.  I was the head 'jockey.'

When my business models got out of sinc, I looked to correct how everyone else was moving and performing.  I wanted to make sure I was in the 'jockey' seat.  My business models were out of sinc because of every other reason, except for me.  I believed the 'jockey' did not create this mess.  I believed the 'jockey' was responsible for fixing this mess.  I was the 'jockey' and I had some repairs to control.  My employees needed to listen to the 'jockey.'  If they did not listen well, our business efforts might continue to fail.  They needed to do what the 'jockey' said needed to be done.

This is exactly why most serious problems a business model will face comes from the leader.  The leaders try so hard to 'jockey' their success.

As time teaches, I discovered how well many of my employees could perform on their own.  All I really needed to do was clearly define where I wanted to be and how long it might take us to get there.  Make sure they understood points of integrity and turn them loose.  I quit the 'jockey' business and managed my models with little touches of the steering wheel.  The more I removed my hands from the steering wheel of performance controls, the more they produced better results.  I discovered I was the one who would 'jockey' my business model out of sinc.  I was micro-managing when I was not needed to be present.

Many of my employees approached problems differently than I would have approached them.  However, many of those same employees solved big problems in a unique but healthy fashion.  They used different techniques, but gained good results.

Are you the 'jockey' who is disturbing the sinc of your business model?  Maybe you might try to take your hands off the wheel once in awhile and see if your model can perform well without your constant application of the spurs on your boots.  Step back and allow your business model to mature.  If your design is well, your business will do fine without your constant spurring.

Kind of scary, isn't it?

Until next time...