Peeves...What Kinds Of Things Tick You Off?

I Have A Few Of My Own!

How many pet peeves do you own?  Are there enough of them to start a small farm?

I have some pet peeves.  One of my pet peeves is that I do not like stupid business leaders.  That is evident from most of my writings.  I make no secret about that fact.  It is one of my pet peeves.  Abraham Lincoln once said, "The size of a persons intelligence is often times measured by the kinds of things they allow to 'wick' them off."  That makes perfect sense.  If I allow a freeway driver who is hogging the road, tailgating and switching lanes with a tight squeezing attitude to 'wick' me off until I am all steamed up, how smart am I?  Not very, right?  Abe Lincoln would respond in my passenger seat with a comment like this..."Well now, you seem to need a bigger problem to manage.  Why don't you get a real problem and work on it for a little while?  That foolish driver switching lanes and tailgating you seems to have dominated your thoughts for a little while."

Pet peeves.  They are the little problems we use to occupy our minds once in awhile.  They do not carry much significance, but they can dominate how our attitudes may run off course for a little while.  Pet peeves carry some pretty important power.  How many pet peeves do you own?

Pet peeves.  I have a lot of them.  I use them often, too.  They cripple my path with backwards movements, also.  They steal valuable time away from the work I should be doing with my mind.  Abe Lincoln was right on.  Sometimes I need a real problem to work on.  A real problem with some significance.  Maybe I should work on a real problem like, why do I get rid of effective talent when I feel threatened by it?  That one is a real problem.  I need to allow my mind to dig in on finding a good solution to that problem.  Why should I feel so threatened?  What weaknesses do I harbor inside that permit me to make this kind of serious business mistake?  A silly pet peeve?

I have seen many silly pet peeves dominate good business leadership opportunities in every single business environment I have managed, worked for and advised.  I have practiced allowing my own pet peeves to rise up and begin to dominate my good work, at times.  We all have this affliction.  We allow the little things that tick us off become so dominating that they can take over our mind enough to interfere with our good intelligence.  What kinds of things tick you off?  Get a closer look at what they are.  They may be the little things that are holding up your production for greatness in your leadership ways.  Those pet peeves may be worth a good healthy examination right now.

There is one thing I have discovered in my business leadership life.  Every single time I work on something I am doing wrong, something I am protecting that should never be allowed to exist, I find when I work to remove that kind of silly pet peeve my business efforts begin to improve their profitable ways.  Every single time!

Also with that discovery comes this...if I want to improve my profitability all I seem to need to do is find something I am protecting that is wrong to do and get it removed or fixed.  The anchors that drag down my good results are running inside my own ship!  Most of those anchors are attached to my silly pet peeves.  The anchors that help to drag down my profitability seem to run parallel to the things that tick me off!  Go figure!

What kinds of things tick you off?  What kinds of things have you allowed to become so important in your thinking ways that they limit how well your profitability can actually perform?  What kinds of things have grown up to become your little pet peeves?  Take a look at these little monsters.  They are killing your production.  They are holding back your success efforts.  They are quietly working overtime so that you do not catch them doing what they are doing.  They are squeezing out good thoughts, good visions and worthwhile thinking so that you can end up giving them more attention than they truly deserve.  They run some very good interference next to your efforts to build a booming business.

Picture someone who is trying to walk to the successful side of their business model and they are dragging along several long ropes with various sized anchors digging into the soil.  Imagine what kind of long hard walk they are trying to protect.  Look at them.  Holding onto every single rope and nudging every single hard step forward while the ropes and anchors scoot so slowly along the soil.  Look at them.  They are actually protecting every single one of those little pet peeves until their business walk becomes too hard to do.  The numbers are still sour, the profitability is slipping away and the people they manage are not happy about what everyone is doing.  Sound familiar?

Pet peeves.  What kinds of things are you allowing to tick you off that are interfering with how well you should be doing?  Get serious about this one.  It has a lot more to do with how you think than it does in how your business model performs.  Get very serious about looking at what kinds of things tick you off.  Is it the way someone stacks the empty boxes in the warehouse?  Is it the way someone speaks to you when you are in a crowd?  Is it the way a clerk dominates the customers friendships that compete with how you are viewed by them?  What ticks you off?  What pet peeves dominate how you think?  Find where these little things live in your mind and actions.  Learn how to get a grip on what they are.  It is little pet peeves like this that will steal your mind away from producing better results.

Pet Peeves Come By The Thousands!

I recently listened to a CEO once tell me that he cannot stand someone who lies.  He went on to say that someone who lies to him is one of the strongest pet peeves he has about leading people.  He described several situations that he recently experienced on that subject.  Two weeks later one of the sales clerks in his organization blew the whistle on something inappropriate that a manager had done.  This manager was one of that CEO's favorite leaders.  A messy series of events followed that whistle blowing event.  Several other sales clerks came forward with some additional accusations about that inappropriate actions of that same manager.  During the inquiry, the manager lied.  The CEO tried hard to protect the lying managers views!

This is the kind of leadership that will ensure poor outcomes in a business model.  To develop some affinity that will grow up large enough to protect our personal pet peeves about what we like and what we do not like is a dangerous way to operate a business model in a good leadership way.  The results will always remain less than desirable.  That CEO professed a belief that he was not initially willing to support when it landed on his favorite porch.  Circumstantial.  We tend to become circumstantial.  We have pet peeves we own but we allow them to dominate our personal preferences.  We often times practice conditional leadership.  We tend to say one thing while we do completely another.  We get caught up with protecting some conditional perspectives.

That CEO was more ticked off about how the sales clerks revealed their discoveries than he was about what was truly going on wrong.  During the process of discovery on this particular issue, the human relations manager of that company got involved in the reviews.  That was the turning point that helped the CEO clear his head and begin to investigate more accurately what was truly happening.  I had a little chat with that human relations manager during this process of discovery and listened to the story of that managers view.  That human relations manager was able to urge the CEO into seeking professional legal council regarding the allegations of the manager at question.  Pet peeves surfaced, dominated and interfered with how the process of discovery was initially handled.  Once the right stuff began to happen, the right results eventually occurred.  However, the organization suffered a great human interest mess.  I am not certain they have fully recovered from that mess.  An initial wrong step may have damaged how the others perform.  Those employees will do what they need to do to keep their jobs, but their true productivity will and always will be damaged.

Pet peeves.  They get in the way of good leadership management.  Protecting pet peeves will only ensure that your organization will need to manage compromised productivity.  Like it or not, that is how the dynamics work.  Make sure we examine how our pet peeves run their course.  Make certain that we do not spend valuable energy protecting what we feel we want to protect.  The kinds of things that tick us off may be exactly the kinds of things keeping us down.  Remove the pet peeves.  Clear the mind to make more room to do better thinking.  In the end, Abe Lincoln was right on.  The size of a persons intelligence is often times measured by the kinds of things they allow to tick them off.

What kinds of things tick you off?  Reading a pointed piece such as this ticks me off!  That is one.

Until next time...