What you do at the top will cascade to the rest of your organisation.
It’s not what you say. Not what you think. It’s not your ideas or your intentions. It’s not your principles or your mission statement.
It’s what you do in the LT meeting and in the board room.
Because you are in control.
P.S.: this is valid even for very small organisations. A family, for example.
Perhaps it’s because it’s Christmas. Perhaps somebody has done something nice for you. Perhaps you have just gotten an unexpected praise, or a long-waited message. Perhaps it’s the energy you are getting from having finally started that project you have been wondering about for so long. Perhaps it’s your family, your friends, your loved one. Or perhaps it’s just because that’s who you are, and you have always known it.
But if you got in the mindset of giving these days, if you are being kind and helpful, if you are saying “I see your point” and “That is interesting” more often than “You are wrong” and “That is stupid”, then just remember that there is no reason why you should not practice that all year round. Even when things are tough. Particularly when things are tough.
Merry Christmas.
What we do is always a manifestation of something deep we feel inside.
When we shout, it might be because we got scared.
When we hit somebody, it might be because we feel insecure.
When we say something mean, it might be because we got treated unfairly.
That’s an explanation of course, but it should not be an excuse. We need to identify what’s deep inside, and tackle it with all our possible resources, because it’s difficult to get rid of the behavior if the feeling is still there.
Managing projects is easy, managing people is difficult.
And that’s not because projects always succeed or achieve what they were supposed to achieve, but because they are made of tasks, timelines, deadlines, deliverables, priorities. All things that, one way or the other, even in the most difficult circumstances, are defined and controllable.
People are not.
People have no limit and they cannot be controlled. They have values, feelings, triggers. They establish relationships and break them. They are motivated and demotivated. They need to talk and to be listened to. They want to progress, take on new challenges, and they panic in the face of change.
We know how people are, because we are people too. And that’s what scares us and makes managing people so difficult.
Exactly the reason why, in a situation of crisis or uncertainty, most management resorts to assigning more tasks, asking for more visibility, setting stricter deadlines, and cracking down on inefficiencies.
Because managing projects is easy, while managing people is difficult.
The lack of candor and openness in most workplaces is one of the main demotivators for employees.
If you work at a place where everybody agrees during a meeting, but then implementing what was decided is a lengthy and painful process, that’s probably because people don’t feel like they are free to speak up or because they don’t want to. One way or the other, the environment gets quickly very toxic, frustration mounts, and what’s left is an ocean of indifference and inefficiency.
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