Saturday, January 31, 2009

So easy a monkey can do it


I’m going to tell you a secret how to be successful in business during a recession: Stop doing what’s not working.

I realize that this seems like a simple premise, and yet there are a lot – and I mean A LOT – of employers who don’t follow that rule. And when times are good, you can get by. But not now.
I spent nine years of life (nine years I’ll never get back) working in a lumbering, stubborn bureaucracy. A college, actually. The people there were very interested in hierarchy, power, and being right. Therefore, if someone with more power than you wanted you to do something, it didn’t matter if it didn’t work. That just meant you need to do more of it (I know a lot of you reading this can relate.)

Now I work for an organization that would compare to a cheetah. It’s limber, easy to get this done, easy to change things, really fast, and extremely successful.

So the big secret of “stop doing what’s not working” became crystal clear to me over the last few weeks. I am working with a team on a project. We collected our data last November and based on that put together the project. But it didn’t come together like we thought it would.

At the college, the next thing that would happen would be finger-pointing, blaming subordinates, and trying to just push that project through. At my current job, the most amazing thing happened. We stopped. Quickly recollected data. Found out the data had indeed changed in just a couple months. Repackaged. And we’re ready to roll. That's how I know we're going to be just fine during the recession, because egos are checked at the door.

I know a lot of people feel that they can’t control a lot at their jobs. And that is true. You work where you work with the people you work with. However, you can use GenerationXpert’s secret to success even if it’s only in what you do. How you react.

Just because you work with a group of monkeys, doesn't mean you have to become one of them.

2 comments:

Kristina said...

You wouldn't think this would be so hard to understand, but based on results, most corporate people must find it baffling.

Le said...

lucky you finding such a neat palce to work.

I put down a lot of my 'success' in local government to coming in late after years in the private sector - tourism.

I just did not recognise 'red tape' - just got to and did and after the fact found out that there should have been 'proceedure' involved ...

But the results were positive so the powers that be forgave me and smiled down ... cheers le