Here is the scenario: Your house is on fire. The smoke alarm has awakened you from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, but you are fine. The fire is currently far enough on the other side of your house that you can easily make your way out of a safe exit and away from danger. So you can get yourself to safety.
You can also fairly easily take a little bit of time to check on family members, get them up, and out of the house. Or, you could grab your important documents that you took the time to put in an easy to transport container, or maybe grab your laptop and a few flash drives with critical information. Or possibly some fairly portable family heirlooms, like a jewelry box or shoebox of old photos.
You do not have time to pack a suitcase and coordinate your wardrobe for the next couple of days. You do not have time to take that old mirror that your grandmother gave you off the wall and carry it to the car. You cannot get the grand piano out the front door in time.
Your crisis is here. It doesn’t matter how long you spent waiting for the right time to prepare for this crisis. Your time to act is now. You will have to be as prepared to handle this crisis as you are right now.
Are you truly prepared?
In the case of a home fire it is fairly easy to prepare for. And if you do happen to suffer through one, the priorities are clear: save yourself, then save others, then possibly save a few things that you are already prepared ahead of time as important.
But let’s take the ‘fire scenario’ and use it as a metaphor. A fight with your spouse has escalated into a possible ending involving lawyers. A close friend has just been given a terminal diagnosis from a doctor. You’ve just been laid off from a major corporation. Your personal business is failing financially. That is your ‘fire,’ your dilemma, your crisis.
First, make sure you don’t get consumed with fear and panic, and find yourself stuck in your ‘house’ and consumed by the ‘fire.’ You can always rebuild or move elsewhere if you can just live through the experience. If you can escape the building before the flames get dangerous, do it.
Next, make sure that important people and things are taken care of and not consumed by the ‘flames,’ if you can help it. Make sure friends and family members are okay, and if the dilemma is really about you, make sure they are okay with you. Make sure your assets are protected from whatever is attacking you.
Now you can deal with the fire...but let’s change the scenario so that it is not as serious, and take a fresh look at it.
The smoke alarm goes off, you awaken from a deep sleep and you see the source of the problem is relatively small appliance has shorted out. You grab a nearby fire extinguisher and vanquish the flames, and then you awaken the family and get them out of the house and call the fire department to come by and check the rest of the house to make sure that the house is safe and no other surprise fires will spring up. You still have a crisis to face, but not a major one.
But you don’t just let the whole house burn down because the coffee pot shorts out, you deal with the very minor fire and then find out what the source really is: bad wiring in the coffee pot versus bad house wiring that is bound to set something else a blaze.
A minor crisis can be handled with minor and relatively painless solutions. They will help you avoid the major crisis that can actually take a physical, financial, or emotional toll that will take much more effort to recover from. But just like the evacuation of the house about to reach fully involved fire status, it helps to do a little preparation and to keep your cool in the situation.
AIG used government bailout money that was supposed to help shore out the struggling insurance/investment giant to pay executive bonuses and avoid contract lawsuits, which could have but the company out of business for good. The right thing to do legally, but the American public, and its new President, are not happy.
NBC Universal finally found a new way to brand the Sci Fi Channel, and in few months it will just be SyFy. Seriously. With a new tag line of “Imagine Greater.” If you thought fan boy hate was reserved of geeks and comic book movies, search for some of the comments online about this one. The hate is coming on strong, and from plenty of people who were barely holding on the channel as it was.
Sometimes your company has to deal with bad timing. Sometimes your company has to deal with a serious gamble of a decision. As the economy continues to suffer, expect a lot more chances to test your crisis management skills while you have to explain your actions.
And make sure you are prepared for the backlash. Because its going to come.
Americans are losing money, jobs, and patience. American businesses are trying their best to adapt to the new economic world. It’s a frightful existence, and some very old companies with long standing reputations will not make it out of this.
So what happens when hard times come? People panic, leaders jump to a conclusion that they hope will get the best results with the least amount of effort and pain, and decisions are made that are meant to push the greater good, but looks more like the digging of their own graves.
Now is the time to make smart decisions that take advantage of the disadvantages of the current reality. Now is the time to continue advertising, so negotiate for new rates with your outlets that have taken good care of you so that you can continue to take good care of them. Now is the time to reach out to new, nontraditional customers to make up for the regulars you are bound to lose, but not alienate your current customer base that has gotten you this far. Now is the time to make sure the tough decisions you make are the right decisions, not just legally binding.
Now is definitely not the time for perplexing moves for the soul propose of generating buzz. There really is such a thing as bad press.
It’s a little bit of a gimmick when you see senior executives pulling espresso shots behind the counter at Starbucks or having Michael Dell taking customer service calls from a cubicle at the Dell help center. But it does give a boost to morale to see the upper echelon at least have some working knowledge of what it takes to slug it out in the trenches every day.
Now here’s a question to think about: do your senior leaders need to have a mastery of the jobs that those that report to them perform every day? The obvious answer to that question is no. But the snarky and the smart answers to that question is, “Isn’t that why they have you there in the first place?”
I made up a fable from bits and pieces of stories I have heard over the years about a janitor in a company with the right amount of corporate experience and knowledge that when the executive board stumbles upon his existence, they immediately plug him into their vacant CEO position, only to demote him back to janitor the next day after company wide complaints of the waste paper baskets not getting emptied as quickly as before.
The moral of the story is that sometimes it is easier to find a boss than a worker bee, and the value of either may not be properly weighed. The point of the story, and overall point of this post, is that you can’t have any logical upward movement inside of your organization if you can not fill the lower level positions and responsibilities that are left vacant.
This goes a step beyond the adage that indispensable employees are the last ones to get the promotions and growth opportunities because the company would literally fall apart if they were to leave their positions. This actually is meant to speak to stagnate growth at both end of the spectrum: cushy executives whose fear of innovation and mobility crush any hope of a natural progression and the failure to hire enough talented new prospects willing to go through the attrition process at your company.
Reviewing What I Said: Do You Want To Work For The Best Leaders?
In working on my new writings, I've been reviewing lots of old writings to see if there are strings of pearls of wisdom that I can claim...or if I have been a classic flip-flopper. Submitted for your review and approval, and article I put on the web in October of 2005. It received no known response...
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DO YOU WANT TO WORK FOR THE BEST LEADERS? by JC Payne
The October 31st, 2005 issue of U.S. News & World Report has a cover story on "America's Best Leaders," chosen by a committee convened by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The article highlighted 25 of the best leaders, for a variety of industry backgrounds, to including names like Bill & Melinda Gates for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Steve Jobs for Apple Computer and Pixar, Brian Lamb for C-SPAN, Condoleezza Rice as United States Secretary of State, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and Oprah Winfrey for HARPO Inc. and `The Oprah Winfrey Show.'
So what does this mean to you as a reader of an article on issues pertaining to the job market? The answer to that question is another question. The answer to that question isn't as simple as it may seem.
Who do you want to work for?
The best answer most people want to give is for the best boss possible. And that would seem to be someone who instills many similar traits to those displayed in this list of best leaders.
But in reality, some of the best leaders live and work in conditions that require some of the most intense and strict behaviors, and are truly some of the hardest people to work for. May be there expectations are too high and there demands are too strict. Maybe your a little more laid back your career (or just lazy period) and the meeting the constant goals of an super-achiever are going to conflict with your plans to play pick-up basketball with the fellas later.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates may have mellowed over the years since the initial wars over which personal computer platform would dominate the market. Or maybe now that they have more money, they can hire better publicists. The horror stories of the original days at Apple and Microsoft are legendary. Remember that Jobs was pushed out of Apple for a while for being overbearing and lording over personal projects that weren't meeting the bottom line.
Remember that Bill Gates made this list for the charitable foundation that he oversees with his wife, **not** for growing Microsoft into what is simultaneously one of the most influential and most hated companies in the world.
As you search the classified for that next possible dream job, make sure you always remember to do your homework. Study up on the company, its performance, and especially its leadership. For every episode of 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' that has Oprah giving away one hundred cars, there a story about her sending staff to by her coffee and lunch because she doesn't carry small bills--and her not being good at remembering to pay them back. Whether true or the fabrication of disgruntled bad employees, you can't get the full picture from a special report.
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
