Category Archives: Leadership

Why Stress If It’s Not Your Fault?

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Perhaps harsh survival advice, but It is not worth hurting yourself over the failure of others. If someone else makes a mistake, why give yourself a heart attack? It is not your fault, so do not pretend like it. And it’s not your responsibility to clean up another person’s mess, whether you know how to or not. So relax; offer a helping hand, and take comfort in the knowledge that you are doing everything that you can to help. Do not stress.

If his or her failure effects you or makes your job harder, it does not resolve the issue to get upset. Anger, frustration, yelling, pouting, and blaming do not smooth things out at all. Stress is almost as unhealthy and contagious as the flu. Your stress will snowball into other people’s stress, which will only come back to hurt you more and make the situation worse. Objectify the problem, take new obstacles at face value, forgive the mistake, and move forward. Do not stress.

If the mistake was made under your leadership, then it is your responsibility. That is one of the risks of leadership, and you need to be prepared to handle the failures of your staff. That said, it is also your responsibility to facilitate recovery from said mistakes. Losing your cool will lose you the upper ground over your problems. Stay focused, think through the situation objectively, realign resources as needed, and act. Decision making is math, not drama. Do not stress.

Ambiguous Job Titles

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The point of a job title is to communicate clearly where you fit and what you do to others inside and out of the company. Clear job titles really help co-workers and clients navigate information and inquiries. Without question, the efficient trafficking of information is necessary to a company’s success. So why, then, is it so common to a) have no idea what your co-workers do and b) have difficulty finding the person responsible for certain categories of business? Well, because we fail to assign each other effective titles.

 Perhaps stemming from a conservative military hesitation from awarding rank, few business leaders give out new titles to employees – except on grounds for promotion. Corporate titles are status symbols and need to be earned. God help you if you try to pick your own. While I appreciate promotions, I do not understand the reservations business leaders have with re-titling employees to better-fit their position. “Well, if I change their titles, then they’ll think they should earn more money.” Just tell them no. It’s your responsibility as a boss to orchestrate and label your resources in a way that optimizes the efficiency of your enterprise. Employees can deal with it.

Infostructure

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Problem numero uno for companies of any size: communication. Far more important than expensive tech IT, companies need to optimize precedents for the exchange of ideas and information between employees and the outside world. Far too often, people who need access to information fall out of the loop. This negligence results in stress, delays, and broken product.

It’s worth time and money to sort out and establish systems for internal communication: who talks to who, where ideas go, who listens to what, who ignores what, where certain types of exchanges occur, when certain types of exchanges occur, and how it all flows together. Create small rules that guide efficient exchange. Paste them around the office and fall into a company-wide routine.

With enough strategy and planning, all employees will know everything they need to know and be on the same page all the time. Utopian? Not at all. All it takes is a little thought and organization.

The Mission Statement

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The most powerful tool in business strategy is your mission statement. It’s the philosophy that inspires your team, communicates your mission, markets your products, and makes you stand out. It’s a tool that gets everyone on the same page. Having a mission statement is not only good leadership advice, it’s just short of necessary to operate and succeed.

I feel like the mission statement is business strategy 101, and I should not need to explain this to people. But alas, it has come to my attention that many companies (including the company I work for) use no such tool. Crazy to me. It’s so simple, so inexpensive, and so effective. All it takes is a few words. Seriously, people. Write a damn mission statement. No excuses.