About Purpose is about your purpose.
Aim: Identify and articulate your purpose.
Arm: Shape yourself around your purpose.
Act: Achieve your purpose.
Choose Your Battles
Bob Ryan, About Purpose, Inc. ©2003
When my daughter first found that she could dress herself, we often were ready to walk out the door only to find her wearing an outlandish combination of patterns, colors and styles. Do we make her change so that we don’t look like totally inadequate, uncaring parents in front of our friends? Would it be worth the inevitable arguments, hurt feelings, and uncomfortable silences we’d all have to endure? Will it affect her self-respect and confidence?
We quickly learned, as most parents do, to choose our battles. There are some things we simply must take a stand on, things that involve safety, morality and protection of others. There are many more things that really don’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of parenting. There are some valuable lessons here to apply to our work lives.
- What is Mission-Critical? If you can’t answer that question in one or two sentences, then you are sadly overdue for some good strategic planning. You see it’s much too easy to miss the forest when all we can see are the trees. You and your top staff should always be aware of what the mission-critical elements are in your workplace and how they translate into daily work. A typical, all-too-prevalent example is the dress code issue. How important and for which employees is it important to dress a certain way? Too much time, effort and goodwill have been squandered on lengths of hair and skirts in physical settings that don’t affect the outcome of the product or service.
- Pride Goeth Before the Brawl. Many times, the issues we get embroiled in have more to do with our own pride than with the importance of the issue. Don’t let yourself react personally to something that simply doesn’t matter in the big picture. Stop and think before you discipline an employee. Does this incident really affect customers or quality? Or is it just an affront to your own sensibilities, likes and dislikes?
- Don’t Succumb to the Tyranny of the Urgent. How often do you find yourself working feverishly on something just because it is urgent, only to find it’s really not important? If you don’t have Covey’s* diagram of the urgent and important taped to your wall, maybe you should. We need to shift our actions to those things that are important, but not urgent (and totally eliminate those things which are neither!). Again, if this is a big problem in your organization, you would do well to engage in some immediate strategic planning. *See Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey.
- Leave your Superhero Cape at Home. This may be a corollary to number three, but some battles we fight really belong to someone else. I once saw a sign on someone’s desk that said, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an crisis on mine.” It may make us feel good to rescue people in distress and to provide all the right answers, but is that the best use of our time? Letting people make mistakes may be just exactly what your organization needs to improve.
- Saving Face is not just for Eastern Cultures. When we do find ourselves in a battle, it is often how we get out of it that saves us time and trouble down the line. Give people the opportunity to save face. Don’t back them up against a wall so that they are embarrassed or otherwise forced into a no-win situation. This month’s issue of Business Ethics Magazine has an article about how a supervisor dealt with a major ethics violation without destroying the employee or the company, saving face all around.
- Develop Self-Confidence in Your Supervisors. The bigger your company gets, the more the choice of battles is out of your hands. Help your management team to be mature decision makers. Talk often with them about what is mission-critical – what is worth taking a stand for and what isn’t. Back them up publicly and coach them privately so that they take actions that are consistent with your company values and mission. My daughter is a pre-school teacher now and makes decisions daily about which battles are the right ones in which to engage. I’d like to think that’s at least partially because of the example my wife and I showed throughout her formative years.
No organization exists without strife. The successful ones choose their battles carefully, focusing their competencies on the truly important. Think over your last couple months. Where have you been spending your energy? Are you choosing your battles wisely?