Never never never never give up

I kind of see everything as connected. Last week we hosted Larry Linne, author of “Make the Noise Go Away,” a book about the roles of first-in-commands and second-in-commands. I will be writing about a couple of things Larry said in his presentation in the next few weeks.

One Larry’s key points was about the tendency of a first-in-command to give up. Not giving up on the business, or on working hard, but giving up on change. We get so much push back from those we employ. “Not another change! The way we do it is working well!” “I just got comfortable with the old way.”

He made a joke about the employees who weren’t at the event. How they were back at the business saying “Oh no! She’s at one of those business seminars again! She is going to want to change things when she gets back.”

The CEOs in the audience laughed. They know that it’s true. How may employees say some version of “I wish they would just leave me alone so I can do my job?”

You didn’t become the owner of a business by doing things the way they were always done. You would still have your old job if that were the case. You changed things. If they didn’t work, you changed them again, and again. You experimented, and probably paid some uncomfortable prices for experiments that didn’t work out.

When things start to work, we stop changing them. You may think they could work better, but there is always a risk that they won’t. Your employees certainly aren’t as comfortable with risk as you are; that’s why they work for you. They push back, you have doubts, so you leave things the way they are. “If it ain’t broke…don’t fix it.”

That way lies mediocrity. It’s one of those sayings that tries to make Hunters into Farmers. “We didn’t do it that way last season. What if it doesn’t work? What if the crop fails?” Farming seeks incremental change. Let’s see if we can increase yields by a few percent. Hunting is new and different every time you step out the front door.

I explain to my employees that it is their job to follow procedures. It is my job not to. You have a responsibility to try new things, because you are the best qualified to judge if those things can accomplish what you want for my business.

Of course, if new ideas don’t work out, You are also the one who bears the consequences. In the end, the cost of everyone’s experiments is yours. That gives you, not them, the right to experiment.

A client of mine had a manager who began changing things. As happens so often, the “new” things he tried had been done and discarded as bad ideas a long time ago. When asked why he wasn’t following procedure, the manger replied “I have my own vision about the way things should be done in this business.”

The owner’s reply was beautiful. He said “You are welcome to your own ideas and your own vision, but you’ll have to go start your own business. This one is mine.”

Last night I put on an old t-shirt from one of my son’s wrestling tournaments at Winston Churchill High School. It made a connection for me. The wrestling team’s motto was the Churchill quote; “Never, never, never, never give up.”