Success is just in front of our faces. Yet, we often fail to see it coming. Too many companies live with their heads in the sand. Many go down into defeat because it was never on their radar to change.
A colleague recently complained about her corporation: “Things are much the same at this company, and I don’t see much changing unless leadership does.”
The answer is that companies need not roll over and accept less than the best. And yes, it takes courage to get management unstuck in their ways. Ninety-two (92) percent of all problems in organizations stem from poor management decisions.
The Biggest Mistakes Which Many of Us Have Made
Abilities, Talents
Making the same mistakes more than twice, without studying the mitigating factors.
Taking incidents out of context and mis-diagnosing situations.
Rationalizing occurrences, after the fact.
Appearing self-contained, therefore precluding others from wanting to help me.
Inability to cultivate other people’s support of me at the times that I needed it most.
Resources
Attempting projects without the proper resources to do the job well.
Not knowing people with sufficient pull and power. Thinking that friends would help introduce me or help network to key influentials.
Failure to effective networking techniques early enough in my career path.
Inability to finely develop the powers of people participating in the networking process.
Other People
Accepting people at their words without questioning.
Showing proper respect to other people and assuming that they would show or were capable of showing comparable respect to others.
Doing favors for others without asking anything in return… if I expected quid pro quo at a later time. Not telling people what I wanted and then being disappointed that they did not read minds or deliver favors of their own volition.
Befriending people who were too needy… always taking without offering to reciprocate. Continuing to feed their needs… a one-way relationship.
Picking the wrong causes to champion at the wrong times and with insufficient resources.
Working with the false assumption that people want and need comparable things. Incorrectly assuming that all would pursue their agendas fairly. A better understanding of personality types, human motivations and behavioral factors would have provided insight to handle situations on a customized basis.
Offering highly creative ideas and brain power to those who could not grasp their brilliance… especially to those who were fishing for free ideas they could then market as their own.
Circumstances Beyond Our Control
Working with equipment, resources and people from a source without my standards of quality control… trying to make the best of bad situations.
Changing trends, upon which I could not capitalize but which others could.
Mis-Calculations
Incorrectly estimating the time and resources necessary to do something well.
Getting blindsided because I did not do enough research.
Failure to plan sufficiently ahead, at the right times.
Setting sights too low. Not thinking big enough.
Timing
Offering advice before it was solicited.
Feeling pressured to offer solutions before diagnosing situations properly.
Not thinking of enough angles and possibilities… sooner.
Marketplace-External Factors
Not reading the opportunities soon enough.
Not being able to spot, create or capitalize upon emerging trends at their beginnings.
Stages of Mistakes
Discovering errors (sensory-motor, sounds-language and logical selection).
Recognizing mistakes.
Separating successful elements from failures we do not need to duplicate.
Learning from mistakes.
Learning from success.
Mentoring yourself and others toward a higher stream of knowledge.
The wisdom that comes from making mistakes, comprehending their outcomes, and developing a knowledge base to achieve success.
Gradations of Failing
Not seeing the warning signs.
Distinguishing among friends, enemies and the majority group, those who could care less about you but who will tap whatever resources available to get their needs met.
Never seeing victories as quite enough.
Feeling that someone else – everyone else – wins when you fail.
Repeating self-defeating behaviors.
Holding unrealistic views.
Thinking that you never fail… that failing is for other people and organizations.
Why We Must Fail… in Order to Succeed
Learning the stumbling blocks of failure prepares one to attain true success. Fear is the biggest contributor to failure, and it can be a motivator for success. You cannot make problems go away, simply by ignoring that they exist.
Everybody fails at things for which they are not suited. The process of learning what one is best suited to do is not a failure…it is a great success. Learn from the best and the worst. People who make the biggest bungling mistakes are showing you pitfalls to avoid.
Many of us make the same mistakes over and over again. That is to be expected and teaches us volumes, preparing us for success. There is no plan that is fool-proof. One plans, learns, reviews and plans further.
One learns three times more from failure than success. One learns three times more clearly when witnessing and analyzing the failures of others they know or have followed. History teaches us about cycles, trends, misapplications of resources, wrong approaches and vacuums of thought. People must apply history to their own lives-situations. If we document our own successes, then these case studies will make us more successful in the future.
Gradations of Learning from Mistakes
Distance one’s self from one’s actions.
Become self-critical.
Recognize that actions have consequences.
Begin accepting responsibility for the consequences.
Learn how to eliminate errors.
Learn how to learn from mistakes.
Accept fallibility, become open to critical feedback and modify actions accordingly.
About the Author
Power Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.
Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.
Power Stars to Light the Business Flameis now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/HankMoore2.jpg333290Nathan Iveshttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngNathan Ives2013-08-02 06:20:212015-12-19 21:41:02The Big Picture of Business: Why a Company Would Improve? The Art of Learning From Failure to Get Better.
StrategyDriven’s Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents reveals how high-risk industry leaders can reduce their significant event risk exposure through application of safety-first principles.
StrategyDriven released Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents, a white paper revealing how high-risk industry leaders can reduce their significant event risk exposure through the cost effective adaptation of key aspects of the U.S. nuclear industry’s safety-first principles.
After the several recent catastrophic industrial accidents within the United States, including the devastating explosions at a Texas fertilizer plant and Louisiana chemical plant, StrategyDriven wanted to help industrial and utility leaders reduce the risk of similar accidents at their facilities.
“Many of today’s significant industrial accidents are preventable, the byproduct of human errors made when safety was subordinated to other priorities,” explains Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “By fostering an organizational culture that puts safety-first, executives and managers create a workplace environment where errors are recognized and proactively corrected before they result in a material event.”
“An effective safety culture is far more than slogans and posters,” continues Greg Gaskey, StrategyDriven’s Chief Operations Officer. “It permeates the organization’s performance standards, operating processes, training programs, rewards systems, and, most importantly, the decisions and behaviors of everyone from the C-Suite to the shop floor.”
Nathan and Greg authored Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents based on their decades of experience managing nuclear and industrial complex operations. Additionally, Nathan led the development of the nuclear industry’s operational risk management, high-risk decision management, and plant operations performance standards while working at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.
Highlights from Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents include:
Safety Culture Attributes – safety focused executives, managers, and employees collectively assume responsibility for both their and their co-workers’ safety; embody a questioning attitude; encourage issue reporting and priority-based resolution; employ error reduction techniques; embed safety-first features within operational, training, and rewards programs; and embrace ongoing organizational learning
Identifying the Strength of Your Safety Culture – artifacts of the safety-first values are not only found in the outcomes achieved, but also reside in the organization’s goals and performance measures, standards and expectations, policies and procedures, rewards systems, training, and organizational learning and continuous improvement programs
Improving Your Safety Culture – individuals at all levels of the organization must be engaged in order to foster a robust safety culture; originating from executive defined attributes and goals and translated to the day-to-day decisions and actions of all employees
Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents is being distributed to StrategyDriven’s clients, including some of the world’s largest utility operators. Download the white paper by clicking here.
About the Authors
Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
Greg Gaskey is a StrategyDriven Principal with over twenty years of nuclear plant operations, maintenance, and large-scale program and project management experience. An experienced Operations Manager, he has managed critical Department of Defense programs, projects, and business lines; spanning multiple engineering maintenance disciplines including mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and instrumentation and controls systems. To read Greg’s complete biography, click here.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/PreventingEventsCoverGraphic.jpg903592Nathan Iveshttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngNathan Ives2013-07-31 06:48:022016-05-06 09:20:51StrategyDriven White Paper Advises Leaders on Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents
Over time, leaders can grow their performance measurement systems to include almost countless numbers of interrelated metrics. Ensuring these numerous metrics remain well aligned, their output quality and relationship integrity preserved, and their meaning well understood while continuing to be of value to executives, managers, and employees necessitates a method of inventorying the measures themselves and their underlying construction characteristics. In our experience, the optimal method for maintaining such an inventory is through the use of a centralized metrics inventory database.
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Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
Last week I talked about the power of sales success and gave you the first ten personal powers you need to possess in order to have all of the sales success you desire. As a professional salesperson, you want more selling power and this two-part article reveals the sources.
Let me share with you the remaining powers you do possess and how you might be able to use them and take advantage of them to build sales, build relationships, build referrals, earn testimonials, and achieve the sales success that you are striving for…
11. The power of relatable example. Please don’t tell me how the product works. Rather, tell me how someone else is using it and winning right now as a result of it.
12. The power of truth. It’s sad I have to write about this. The elusiveness of truth has caused more business deals and more relationships to be lost to lack of truth than to lowest bid. Truth starts with you.
13. The power of trust. Trust is built slowly over time by taking consistent, value-based actions. Trust is lost in a minute by taking inappropriate actions, tellinguntruths, or failure to deliver as promised.
14. The power of service. The power of service is realized through actions, not advertisements. There is no power in telling me how great your service is, there is power in delivering it, and there is HUGE power in having your customers talk about it, brag about it, on social media.
15. The power of a relationship. Real relationships mean there is no bidding involved and no proposals involved in earning a sale. Relationships are based on mutual value provided, mutual loyalty exchanged, truth, and trust. Take a moment right now and list the ten customers that fall into this category. If there are less than ten your power isn’t close to what it could be.
16. The power of loyalty. I define loyal customers two ways: will a customer do businesswith me again and will they refer someone to me. Many customers may never be satisfied, but they continue to do business with you. That’s loyalty. Repeat business and unsolicited referrals are the report card that everything else in the relationship is excellent. Keep in mind that loyal customers are also your most profitable customers.
17. The power of reputation and social brand. Social media presence is no longer an option. And the most powerful part of it is the fact that your customers can interact with you one-on-one. They have access to your Facebook page. They can tweetabout you with a hashtag. They can post a video about how great you are on YouTube. Social media can make you a fortune or cost you a fortune. It all depends on the way you respond and the speed of your response.
18. The power of proof. When you make statements or claims about yourself, it’s bragging. When your customers say the SAME THING about you, it’s proof. Proof is a reputation builder, proof is a sales tool, and proof reinforces the belief of everyone in your company that you are who you say you are, and you do what you say you’ll do.
19. The power and joy of rejection. It’s amazing what you can learn when someone says no to you. Much more than when someone says yes. In both cases you need to understand why the yes or the no occurred. Celebrate the no. It will help you understand why and ultimately get to more yeses. The power of rejection, and learning from it, is the foundation for your resilience and your success.
20. The power, joy, and celebration of victory. YES attitude! When you’re in sales, nothing feels better than making one. The power comes one minute after the celebration. That’s when you start making the next one. Most salespeople stop after one. Big mistake. Your assertiveness is in high gear, your belief system is in higher gear, and your attitude, your YES Attitude!, is in highest gear. Once you learn that the best time to make a sale is right after you have just made a sale, you’re on the path to doubling your sales.
20.5 The power of opportunity. The most important realization in sales and selling is the one you give to yourself. You do not have a job. You have an opportunity. An opportunity to earn while you’re learning. An opportunity to earn based on your results. And an opportunity to grow without limits. If you look at your present position as an opportunity, then all barriers and all negatives will fall by the wayside as you challenge yourself to be your best regardless of your circumstance, regardless of your boss, regardless of the marketplace, and regardless of any obstacle that is in your way. I challenge you to take full advantage of your opportunity.
NOTE WELL: These powers do not act alone. Rather, they act in harmony with one another. One power will not put you over the top. It’s important to know them all and it is equally important to execute them all at their highest level.
Many of you are probably frantically searching for the first part of this article that appeared last week. Your search is over. Go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word POWER in the GitBit box.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/JeffreyGitomer.jpg218156StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2013-07-29 06:13:232016-08-07 22:01:04The POWER of Sales Success. It’s all within you!
Office Idiots are those individuals whose actions, inaction, antics, and ridiculous behaviors generate widespread dissatisfaction and undercut the performance and productivity of fellow employees near and far and at any job level. Importantly, an organization’s leadership plays a critical role not only in terms of identifying office idiocy, but also from the standpoint of taking corrective and preventive action. The overarching theme is that when management ignores, tolerates, or even enables office idiocy, the outcome is destined to be a continuation and expansion of these counterproductive antics.
Not surprisingly, when managers and leaders act like office idiots, the population of office idiots in their departments tends to increase. There is no question that employees learn from their managers, and it is well understood that managerial behaviors and actions serve as models for the employees to emulate. As a result, when you find a manager who sits in meetings while texting and surfing the Internet on his smartphone, you will also find that his or her employees are far more likely to engage in the exact same idiotic behavior. And what should you do if you are trying to have a serious discussion with your manager or colleague and he or she is texting, glancing at the computer screen, and pecking away at the keyboard at the same time? You should say something, lest you are actually enabling this behavior. Tell this individual that you need his or her attention in order to discuss an important matter. And if the glazed look continues, simply suggest that the two of you meet later. In terms of the bigger picture, leadership assertiveness is a key element in dealing with most forms of office idiocy.
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Ken Lloyd, PhD, is a nationally recognized Southern California management consultant, author, speaker, and newspaper columnist. He has taught numerous MBA classes at The Anderson School at UCLA and lectures at many other universities. He is the vice president of planning and development at Strategic Partners, Inc. and a frequent television and talk-radio guest, as well. He has authored several books, including Jerks at Work and Performance Appraisals and Phrases for Dummies. A member of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, he graduated from UC Berkeley and received his MS and PhD in organizational behavior from UCLA.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.png00StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2013-07-26 06:12:572016-01-31 13:22:11Key Leadership Strategies to Identify, Manage, and Prevent Office Idiocy
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Business Programs
The Big Picture of Business: Why a Company Would Improve? The Art of Learning From Failure to Get Better.
/in Practices for Professionals/by Hank MooreSuccess is just in front of our faces. Yet, we often fail to see it coming. Too many companies live with their heads in the sand. Many go down into defeat because it was never on their radar to change.
A colleague recently complained about her corporation: “Things are much the same at this company, and I don’t see much changing unless leadership does.”
The answer is that companies need not roll over and accept less than the best. And yes, it takes courage to get management unstuck in their ways. Ninety-two (92) percent of all problems in organizations stem from poor management decisions.
The Biggest Mistakes Which Many of Us Have Made
Abilities, Talents
Resources
Other People
Circumstances Beyond Our Control
Mis-Calculations
Timing
Marketplace-External Factors
Stages of Mistakes
Gradations of Failing
Why We Must Fail… in Order to Succeed
Learning the stumbling blocks of failure prepares one to attain true success. Fear is the biggest contributor to failure, and it can be a motivator for success. You cannot make problems go away, simply by ignoring that they exist.
Everybody fails at things for which they are not suited. The process of learning what one is best suited to do is not a failure…it is a great success. Learn from the best and the worst. People who make the biggest bungling mistakes are showing you pitfalls to avoid.
Many of us make the same mistakes over and over again. That is to be expected and teaches us volumes, preparing us for success. There is no plan that is fool-proof. One plans, learns, reviews and plans further.
One learns three times more from failure than success. One learns three times more clearly when witnessing and analyzing the failures of others they know or have followed. History teaches us about cycles, trends, misapplications of resources, wrong approaches and vacuums of thought. People must apply history to their own lives-situations. If we document our own successes, then these case studies will make us more successful in the future.
Gradations of Learning from Mistakes
About the Author
Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.
Power Stars to Light the Business Flameis now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.
StrategyDriven White Paper Advises Leaders on Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents
/in Announcements, Corporate Cultures, Risk Management/by Nathan Ives and Greg GaskeyStrategyDriven’s Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents reveals how high-risk industry leaders can reduce their significant event risk exposure through application of safety-first principles.
StrategyDriven released Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents, a white paper revealing how high-risk industry leaders can reduce their significant event risk exposure through the cost effective adaptation of key aspects of the U.S. nuclear industry’s safety-first principles.
After the several recent catastrophic industrial accidents within the United States, including the devastating explosions at a Texas fertilizer plant and Louisiana chemical plant, StrategyDriven wanted to help industrial and utility leaders reduce the risk of similar accidents at their facilities.
“Many of today’s significant industrial accidents are preventable, the byproduct of human errors made when safety was subordinated to other priorities,” explains Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “By fostering an organizational culture that puts safety-first, executives and managers create a workplace environment where errors are recognized and proactively corrected before they result in a material event.”
“An effective safety culture is far more than slogans and posters,” continues Greg Gaskey, StrategyDriven’s Chief Operations Officer. “It permeates the organization’s performance standards, operating processes, training programs, rewards systems, and, most importantly, the decisions and behaviors of everyone from the C-Suite to the shop floor.”
Nathan and Greg authored Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents based on their decades of experience managing nuclear and industrial complex operations. Additionally, Nathan led the development of the nuclear industry’s operational risk management, high-risk decision management, and plant operations performance standards while working at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.
Highlights from Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents include:
Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents is being distributed to StrategyDriven’s clients, including some of the world’s largest utility operators. Download the white paper by clicking here.
About the Authors
Performance Metrics Inventory Database
/in Organizational Performance Measures, Premium/by Nathan IvesHi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.
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About the Author
The POWER of Sales Success. It’s all within you!
/in Marketing & Sales/by Jeffrey GitomerLast week I talked about the power of sales success and gave you the first ten personal powers you need to possess in order to have all of the sales success you desire. As a professional salesperson, you want more selling power and this two-part article reveals the sources.
Let me share with you the remaining powers you do possess and how you might be able to use them and take advantage of them to build sales, build relationships, build referrals, earn testimonials, and achieve the sales success that you are striving for…
11. The power of relatable example. Please don’t tell me how the product works. Rather, tell me how someone else is using it and winning right now as a result of it.
12. The power of truth. It’s sad I have to write about this. The elusiveness of truth has caused more business deals and more relationships to be lost to lack of truth than to lowest bid. Truth starts with you.
13. The power of trust. Trust is built slowly over time by taking consistent, value-based actions. Trust is lost in a minute by taking inappropriate actions, tellinguntruths, or failure to deliver as promised.
14. The power of service. The power of service is realized through actions, not advertisements. There is no power in telling me how great your service is, there is power in delivering it, and there is HUGE power in having your customers talk about it, brag about it, on social media.
15. The power of a relationship. Real relationships mean there is no bidding involved and no proposals involved in earning a sale. Relationships are based on mutual value provided, mutual loyalty exchanged, truth, and trust. Take a moment right now and list the ten customers that fall into this category. If there are less than ten your power isn’t close to what it could be.
16. The power of loyalty. I define loyal customers two ways: will a customer do businesswith me again and will they refer someone to me. Many customers may never be satisfied, but they continue to do business with you. That’s loyalty. Repeat business and unsolicited referrals are the report card that everything else in the relationship is excellent. Keep in mind that loyal customers are also your most profitable customers.
17. The power of reputation and social brand. Social media presence is no longer an option. And the most powerful part of it is the fact that your customers can interact with you one-on-one. They have access to your Facebook page. They can tweetabout you with a hashtag. They can post a video about how great you are on YouTube. Social media can make you a fortune or cost you a fortune. It all depends on the way you respond and the speed of your response.
18. The power of proof. When you make statements or claims about yourself, it’s bragging. When your customers say the SAME THING about you, it’s proof. Proof is a reputation builder, proof is a sales tool, and proof reinforces the belief of everyone in your company that you are who you say you are, and you do what you say you’ll do.
19. The power and joy of rejection. It’s amazing what you can learn when someone says no to you. Much more than when someone says yes. In both cases you need to understand why the yes or the no occurred. Celebrate the no. It will help you understand why and ultimately get to more yeses. The power of rejection, and learning from it, is the foundation for your resilience and your success.
20. The power, joy, and celebration of victory. YES attitude! When you’re in sales, nothing feels better than making one. The power comes one minute after the celebration. That’s when you start making the next one. Most salespeople stop after one. Big mistake. Your assertiveness is in high gear, your belief system is in higher gear, and your attitude, your YES Attitude!, is in highest gear. Once you learn that the best time to make a sale is right after you have just made a sale, you’re on the path to doubling your sales.
20.5 The power of opportunity. The most important realization in sales and selling is the one you give to yourself. You do not have a job. You have an opportunity. An opportunity to earn while you’re learning. An opportunity to earn based on your results. And an opportunity to grow without limits. If you look at your present position as an opportunity, then all barriers and all negatives will fall by the wayside as you challenge yourself to be your best regardless of your circumstance, regardless of your boss, regardless of the marketplace, and regardless of any obstacle that is in your way. I challenge you to take full advantage of your opportunity.
NOTE WELL: These powers do not act alone. Rather, they act in harmony with one another. One power will not put you over the top. It’s important to know them all and it is equally important to execute them all at their highest level.
Many of you are probably frantically searching for the first part of this article that appeared last week. Your search is over. Go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word POWER in the GitBit box.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Key Leadership Strategies to Identify, Manage, and Prevent Office Idiocy
/in Management & Leadership, Tools for Professionals/by Ken LloydOffice Idiots are those individuals whose actions, inaction, antics, and ridiculous behaviors generate widespread dissatisfaction and undercut the performance and productivity of fellow employees near and far and at any job level. Importantly, an organization’s leadership plays a critical role not only in terms of identifying office idiocy, but also from the standpoint of taking corrective and preventive action. The overarching theme is that when management ignores, tolerates, or even enables office idiocy, the outcome is destined to be a continuation and expansion of these counterproductive antics.
Not surprisingly, when managers and leaders act like office idiots, the population of office idiots in their departments tends to increase. There is no question that employees learn from their managers, and it is well understood that managerial behaviors and actions serve as models for the employees to emulate. As a result, when you find a manager who sits in meetings while texting and surfing the Internet on his smartphone, you will also find that his or her employees are far more likely to engage in the exact same idiotic behavior. And what should you do if you are trying to have a serious discussion with your manager or colleague and he or she is texting, glancing at the computer screen, and pecking away at the keyboard at the same time? You should say something, lest you are actually enabling this behavior. Tell this individual that you need his or her attention in order to discuss an important matter. And if the glazed look continues, simply suggest that the two of you meet later. In terms of the bigger picture, leadership assertiveness is a key element in dealing with most forms of office idiocy.
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About the Author