What Makes Business So Hard To Do?

We Keep Poor Performers Too Long

I heard a great story yesterday.  It came from a co-worker who described one of their family discussions during Christmas dinner this past weekend.  Unfortunately, it is not a story that should be repeated.  We all live through some of these very same things in our own personal lives.  We have a story or two buried deep in our own personal family tree that grows up becoming a maize of interesting twists and turns about humanity.  I once had a good business mentor that often described human beings in a particular way.  He could be heard often describing how systems were king and that when you add the people to those systems they get 'screwed up' enough to fail.  It is rarely the system that fails.  It more often than not failed because the people failed.  People cannot follow the system well enough to permit the system to work well.  What makes business so hard?  People do.  People make business hard to do.  People 'screw up' the chance for business to be easy to do.  It is us.  It is our fault.  We make business hard to do.  We be it.

I could stop writing this post right here and many would not get it.  Most readers read 'self-help' material as if the suggestions and messages being penned are being sent about how others fail doing those things.  Rarely do we read to find out what we are doing wrong.  I know I like reading about how others need to improve their perspectives.  I share roads and freeways with a lot of people who need to improve their perspectives.  I see the stupid things they do with their attitudes and vehicles.  When we were traveling back from our Christmas vacation a young lady in a short sports car was tailgating me fiercely on a two lane road for about ten minutes.  Finally she had had enough of my speed limit driving and bolted around me while the double lines were in both lanes.  Double lines means "Do Not Pass."  As she passed us, she was holding a cell phone to her ear with one hand.  My wife noticed the hair on my back raise.  She said, "Let her go.  Thank God she does not work for you."

The problem we have in our business world is that we have people inserted into key positions that often times do not follow the system the way we planned for it to work.  That is one of the reasons why business is so hard to do.  We fail to give this kind of lady a pink slip the minute we see her do this kind of thing at work.  We lack the courage to 'get' her to recognize what she needs corrected in order for us to operate more profitably.  We have become soft.  We do not want to become hard-lined in our operational ways.  We bend the system to match the people.  As a result, certain non-productive people take over the bad functions allowed in our system design.  We convince ourselves we have done the right thing and as a result, we make business harder to do.  We mismanage the little things often enough that they eventually grow up to become serious obstacles that constantly rub against the system for success we originally designed.  We become part of the people problem that failed the system.  We lack courage.  That is the sole reason why business is so hard to do.  We are hard to do.  We fail the systems we designed.

What's more, we deny it.  If by chance some police official happened to witness this young lady's driving habits and pulled her over for the infractions, I suspect she would try to talk her way out of those actions.  I rarely hear someone respond in this way, "Oh well, you caught me!  Darn.  What's my fine?"  We do not easily admit when we error.  We love denial.  We worship denial.  We get very creative when denial is needed.  Some of us do our best personal work when denial is being paged.  The best of our good traits decide to surface when we are faced with the task of 'getting out of trouble' for doing something very wrong.  That is why business is so hard to do.  We scurry well when scurry is required.  Leaders recognize this move and permit far more than they should ever tolerate.  We lack the courage to do the things we know we should be doing.  What makes business so hard to do?  We make business hard to do.  Our systems for success are not very well protected.  We design them but fail to honor them.  We give second, third, fourth and fifth chances for someone to violate the way we want our system to work.  Then we ask the silly question, why is this so hard to do?  What makes business so hard to do?

What's worse, when we develop a working system that has proven itself to work well we cannot actually support that system in the way we need to protect it.  We lack the power to fax a traffic violation ticket into the dashboard of that girl's car.  We cannot make her pay for the violations she committed.  We are not authorized to protect our-self from co-worker violations of the system design.  We need to rely on the 'chance' that an official can 'catch' her bad driving habits and begin to fine her until she 'gets' it.  Even then, she may never modify the way she puts others at risk from the methods she uses to drive her vehicle.  She may be one of those who constantly makes sure we have senseless accidents that will once in awhile turn very wrong and as a result, change many lives forever.  She may be so self consumed that she has accepted how she has become a permanent high risk for others to manage.  If anyone shares her space and time they must assume her risky ways.  She certainly was not thinking about my wife and I when she took that chance to pass us in a dangerously unsafe area on that two lane road, using less than her complete attention to manage that high risk.  I slowed down to allow her back in, to manage my risk better.  I cannot get the attention of many others that I exist in this space as well.  My future welfare is often times placed into the hand of someone else.  That fact makes business hard to do.  People are in the system of good design.  People fail.

We Fail To Recognize The Value Of True Performers

When I write my profile, I use the description of improving relationships.  Business success centers around this very single core of focus.  Relationships become the key to how well your model will perform.  If your 'people' skills lack good harmony, good respect, good discipline, honorable courage...your business model will likely fail to perform well long term.  No system will ever consistently produce excellent business numbers if it is tainted by actions similar to the unprofessional ones the girl used to pass our vehicle.  If she owns a business model, I can assure you that sooner or later it will fail.  That is a guarantee.  I do not need to wait for a round table discussion about the matter.  It is what it is.  She will eventually fail.  It is just a matter of time.  The subject is not about what, but rather, when.  This is how businesses fail.  They do not pay closer attention to the things they do wrong.

What makes business so hard to do?  People do.  People fail to do what they should do.  People fail to do what they need to do.  People fail to do what is inconvenient to do.  They will not slow down to do better and more quality work.  People actually believe that getting there sooner with added pleasures inserted along the way will eventually help them receive more in less time spent.  Think about it.  We have become so enamored with efficiency that we actually believe multi-tasking is a very good thing.  We write this kind of requirement into our want ads for hire.  We describe how we are looking for someone who has this ability to do multiple things all at once so we can get more bang for our buck.  How selfish can we actually become?  We now do not consider it wrong to take advantage of good people with great skills.  We blatantly describe our misguided desires in print and broadcast it to the public without even giving it a second thought.  I see this behavior in employment want ads every single day.  Leaders have gone astray.

Leaders do not know the first thing about getting good people to do good work and to provide them the best atmosphere for securing good work to remain.  We have great systems with terrible respect for how the human factor plays its role.  We cannot believe the world has cheaters, liars and arrogant participants running loose in our business models.  We harbor some of them inside the business models we manage.  We lack the courage to remove those cheaters away from our systems.  We actually believe we can live fine in our business models with the girl that passes vehicles in a very dangerous way.  We tolerate her 'style' and modify our systems to accept her ways.  Our system becomes compromised and we do not know why the business model fails.  We employ junk and expect perfection results.  What makes business so hard to do?  People do.  People make business hard to do.

Do not get me wrong, forgiveness and tolerance is a minimum must for a leader to possess.  Great leaders carry these traits very well.  Second chances are a required element to performing good leadership.  Having a hardcore, straight line personality is not the best way to manage a long term system of success.  I am not advocating this kind of leadership.  It will eventually fail.  However, when the time comes to perform the courageous move to "clean-up" your employment ranks, be strong enough to do that move.  Get rid of the ones who continually abuse your system of success.  They must go.  This is also what makes business so hard to do.  I have never enjoyed removing an employee.  That holds just as well for the ones who deserved it.  It was never fun.  Removing them has not always been popular.  Removing them was not always done correctly.  That is what makes business so hard to do.  People make business hard to do.  I am one of those people.  I make my business hard to do.  I get caught up in the people stuff and fail to honor the beauty of my designed system.  People 'screw' it up.  I be one of those people.  I add my two cents to the failure path.

Learn how to improve your leadership skills.  Help yourself to become better at the leadership game.  You might not recognize how many lives you are affecting.  Your leadership moves will be witnessed by those who hinge on performing better or worse in your business model.  Their decision to act will be greatly determined by the way you practice your business leadership.  That is why improved relationships are so vital to the success quotient your business model reveals.  Business is hard to do because people are hard to do.  We are very slippery characters.  We fail to lift this truth up high enough to make the best decisions about who should go and who should stay.  By default, we fail to do what is right to do and as a result, good ones drift away while the wrong ones remain.  Good ones do not remain in a model for very long if that model does not protect their lanes on the road.  They eventually drift away and offer their wonderful skills to another employer somewhere else in another time.  This kind of stuff makes business hard to do.

Clean up your relationships.  Learn how to practice respect.  Demand it.  Some of our current relationships are not as healthy as our our business model deserves.  What makes business hard to do?  We do.  We are people.  We struggle with relationships.  It hurts our business model performances.  I make business hard to do.

Until next time...