“ PLANNED ABANDONMENT” ( # 280:1)
Management guru Peter Drucker advocates a practice he calls planned abandonment. He stresses how important it is that managers develop the wisdom and courage to regularly review what the organization is doing and determine whether it's worth doing. He urges executives to note and resist the systemic and emotional forces that make it difficult to abandon activities that drain resources, detract from central goals, or otherwise impede progress.
Professor Drucker's insights about abandonment seem equally applicable to the management of our lives. Many of us continue to pursue unrealistic career goals or stay in unhealthy or non constructive relationships that ought to be abandoned because they keep us from moving upward and forward toward core life goals.
It makes no sense to settle for relationships that lessen rather than enlarge us, that diminish rather than develop our values and character. Thus, we should summon the courage and integrity to abandon dead-end personal or work relationships. We need to recognize how murky notions of loyalty can blind us to simple realities and how unrealistic hopes that things will change can prevent us from achieving our higher potential.
Toxic relationships not only make us unhappy; they corrupt our attitudes and dispositions in ways that undermine healthier relationships and blur our vision of what is possible. It's never easy to change, but nothing gets better without change.
**********************************
SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF QUALITY IMPROVEMENT (280:2)
I recently met with hundreds of quality improvement specialists at the California State University system. That's right, there are people whose job it is to make things better. As I prepared, it struck me how similar quality improvement is to character development. Here are seven principles:
1. You don't have to be sick to get better. Every system or process, every person, can be improved.
2. Good enough, isn't. The "if it's not broke, don't fix it mentality" promotes mediocrity that evolves to inferiority. If you're not getting better, you're probably getting worse. Systems that do not adapt to changing circumstances not only become obsolete, often they become counter-productive.
3. There can be no improvement without change and change is scary.
4. All change involves risk, but failure to change involves greater risk.
5. No system is more powerful than the people who create or manage it. Systems, like belief patterns, are created by the human mind and they can always be modified or abandoned by choice.
6. The quality of service cannot exceed the quality of the systems through which it is delivered. Bad processes, confusing, irrational or out-of-date policies will yield bad products and services; bad values yield bad choices.
7. Changing systems even slightly can be costly; not every improvement is worth the cost.
(This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.)
TEN TRUTHS FOR THE BOSS (280.3)
Why is it that most employees think their bosses are at least a little out of touch? Probably because they are. Even those who worked their way to the top lose some credibility and effectiveness because they don't recognize what I call Ten Truths for the Boss:
1. The more certain you are that "it can't happen here," the more likely it is that it will. Be careful about overconfidence and complacency.
2. There are lots of things you don't know, and lots of people who hope you don't find out. Hardly anybody tells you the whole truth anymore. Information is filtered through the fears and career aspirations of subordinates, and many employees believe you will "kill the messenger" if they deliver bad news so they tell you what they think you want to hear.
3. To those who want to please you, your whisper is a yell and your comments are commands. Be careful, people may do foolish things to please you.
4. What you allow, you encourage.
5. There's never just one bad employee; there's the employee and the manager who keeps him.
6. At least someone who works for you is "gaming" the system so they appear to reach their business objectives with smoke and mirrors rather than real achievement.
7. According to the law of big numbers, if you have lots of employees, you probably have a few crooks and psychopaths working for you.
8. Few people think as highly of your ethics as you do.
9. No matter how many good things you do, you will be judged by your last worst act.
10. No matter what your job description says, what matters most is how you manage relationships and people.
**********************************
THE CHALK BOARD (280.4)
When his son was just learning to write, Paul Halpern gave him a small chalkboard so they could write notes to each other. One evening while Paul was in the living room his son called out from the bedroom, "How do you spell 'best'?" A few minutes after Paul answered, his son yelled again: "How do you spell 'kid'?" Paul yelled back, "k-i-d" And then, for a third time his son asked, "How do you spell 'ever'?"
When Paul went into the child's room to view the board, he expected to see a note saying, "I am the best kid ever," but he was totally surprised when his son presented him a different message: "You are the best dad a kid can ever have."
Paul told his son he would have to buy him another chalkboard because he wanted to save this one. Many years later, it still hang's on Paul's wall.
Most people struggle hard for approval at work with the hope of getting acknowledgment, a raise or a promotion. And these forms of recognition can give real pleasure. Yet if you could choose between winning your child's "best dad a kid can ever have" award and being named the best employee, which would you choose?
The point is not to belittle the pursuit of recognition and success in your business life, but to remind you how much closer, more personally meaningful and easier it is to find an enduring sense of pride and pleasure in the earned appreciation of your own children.
**********************************
TAKING CHARGE OF THE BALLOON ( 280.5)
A man in a hot air balloon, realizing he was lost, lowered it to shout to a fellow on the ground: "The wind's blown me off course, can you tell me where I am?" The man replied, "Sure. You're hovering about 60 feet over this wheat field." "You must be an engineer," the balloonist yelled. "I am. How did you know?" the man replied. "Well, everything you told me is technically correct but of absolutely no use." The engineer retorted, "You're an executive, right?" " "How did you know?" the balloonist responded. "Well, you were drifting in no particular direction before you asked my help and you're still lost but now it's my fault."
The balloon is a good metaphor for our lives. At first, all we want to do is rise as high as we can in terms of money, position and prestige. Yet as we rise wind currents push us sideways. Eventually, many of us discover that we're on a very different course than we intended, a long way from the spot we took off from or hoped to end up at. So we blame the wind or anything else.
What we have to realize is that our power of choice is a steering mechanism that lets us respond to each breeze and gust. We can drift with or go against the current. Like haphazard wind currents, unplanned events beyond our control affect the direction of our lives. But, in the end, what we do and become is determined by our choices. The key is to be attentive, to look around to be sure we are going where we want to go.
**********************************
NOTE:
For an archive of commentaries, including audio files, visit:http://www.charactercounts.org/knxtoc.htm
To become a new subscriber, reply to Commentary@jiethics.org with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
Share your thoughts on any of these commentaries in the CHARACTER COUNTS! Discussion Forum:
http://www.charactercounts.org/discus/messages/board-topics.html
Please forward this e-newsletter to others and let us know if you have any problems viewing it.
Josephson Institute of Ethics
4640 Admiralty Way Suite 1001
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6610
(310) 306-1868 / (800) 711-2670
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment