I spent 12 plus hours working yesterday and extra hours the two days before that... Need to decompress a little. I love my job, it's interesting, challenging and I get to work with lot's of good people.
What more could you ask?
It's not that I love every minute of every day. Often there are stressors..mostly good. Sometimes frustrating stressors when we run into things we can't change. Note to self - Try to use the Serenity Prayer more often.
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I really admire my daughters.
They have the ability and wherewithal to stick with academics and athletics.
Having to stick it out with a coach who is unable to motivate you is one of the unique features of High School athletics. If you were to hire a coach for say voice lessons, or fitness or organizational skills; you certainly would not keep paying them if they were unable to perform (defined as assisting you in getting your goal accomplished).
In a work environment a person who is unable to perform their task is either let go, reassigned, or in the absence of management attention somehow integrated into a workgroup (how successfully of course depends on the person, the group and the nature of their task).
Anyway....I think coaching like a lot of things can be categorized in one of three ways -
a. Motivate people to do better than they would in your absence
b. Have no effect one way or another
c. De-motivate people to actually perform at a level below what they would in your absence.
It's sort of a "first do no harm" philosophy. If you can't motivate at least try to not cause people to perform below their capabilities. Easier said then done sometimes.
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A few years ago I was thinking about work dynamics and the choices each of us make on the job to either help or hinder the goal of the enterprise. This is in the "first do no harm" category as well.
Assume I sit at my desk all day, get my work done, and don't bother other people (by bother I mean prevent them from doing what they need to do). That's okay. Not grounds for an immediate bonus but okay.
Now assume I sit at my desk all day, don't get my work done and don't bother other people. That might be okay if my work is not important or maybe I don't really have any work to get done. This is the first do no harm scenario.
The third scenario is I don't get my work done and also prevent other people from getting their work done. This could range from the minor case of just distracting other people with trivial but enjoyable conversation, to medium distractions of unwanted conversations of a complaining nature, to major distractions involving multiple people actually changing work they need to be doing to attend to my distraction.
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I'm going to cut to the chase if I can. My point is that you can not work (perform work-related tasks) and not gum up the organization sometimes. That's okay...and in fact in some cases it's for the best.
The reason I say that is to lead to the worst case scenario. That's where you don't get your work done...but create additional non-value added work for others.
Here's an example -
Say I'm a manager of a team of people. My assignment is to ensure a set of tasks is accomplished on time and on budget. An important part of that assigment is to ensure my team is motivated and as much as possible satisfied with their work. I have any number of resources to teach myself how to accomplish my assigment as a manager.
However rather than concentrating on my task I let my eye wander from the ball and don't get my team motivation/satisfaction work done. Instead I either decide or am directed to concentrate my efforts on promotion/tracking of non-value added activities.
I think I just described Dilbert in a really boring way :-)
You may have heard people say as a worker you should treat the business as if you were the owner. I like that idea. I like to think about what I would pay people to do and how they would be rewarded. In really simple terms, like assuming I owned a lawn mowing business where I get paid a certain amount for each lawn I mow. If I extended my business to the point I could afford to hire another person I'd hire another person who was good at mowing lawns.
My simple point not to belabor it too much is, a business has to decide what it does and then hire and retain people who are good at doing that thing. If you forget what you do...or allow too many people to get onboard who aren't good at doing that thing then someone, rightfully so, will take your business's place as provider of that item or service.
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There's a secondary point here that is worth mentioning. If you hire people to do a job, we as human beings will strive to do our best to accomplish that job. The problems arise when you assign people jobs that didn't need to be done (not so bad) or worse yet, jobs that interfere with the goal of your organization. In the mowing example that would be equivalent to me hiring someone to rebuild my mower engine every week. Not only is it unnecesary but it causes me to lose money because I can't mow while they are tinkering with my tool.
An finally a third point on knowing what it is your business does. Again this sounds simple as heck but take my word for it...it's not. We might assume everyone in an organization knows what their business does and works to get that business done. Not quite. What actually happens is the business of business (I'm talking big business) is not so much to produce a thing as it is to please a person.
That's okay as long as the person you are pleasing knows what the business does and accomplishing that is his or her prime goal. Problem is as you build layers of organizational structure (aka management) people get further and futher from the customer.
I'm going to propose the ultimate goal of a business is to please customers who pay for your product..if that pleases the guy or gal on the org chart above you good deal...if not I hope you are close to retirement or have alternate occupation plans for when the biz goes down the tubes.
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Note - I'm relatively sure this has very little meaning for people unfamiliar with the context. If I was any kind of small business owner/entrepreneur of some sort the conversation of above would be like two pounds of crap in a one pound bag. Of course you aren't going to pay someone who doesn't help you get the job done....take my word for it that is not necessarily the case as organizations grow.
Peace out
