These Are Not Enough. These Are Not Management Philosophies.
May 17th 2008
I admit straight up that I am not a good “team player”. At home I try to be one, though, and I have to make big efforts to be a good team player with J. At work, I can be a good one if the project is worthwhile. However, since I view largely every non-critical project we do as pointless and worthless (and some may not be, which then bounces back to the goals of the project not being stated nor communicate). I am not, however, a good team play for busywork uselessness. If you did not define goals and you did not communicate goals and reasoning and how it connects to something that I give a good god damn about, then you will find me to be a liability and not an asset to the team. Vague ideas and open ended time lines do not a project make.
Here are two phrases that when coming from other people are not enough.
(1)Just do it.
(2)Because I said so.
The first is fine for the self, but not for the other. Action instead of planning. Movement instead of motionlessness. It is the ad campaign for Nike, of course, and it’s a damn good ad slogan if you’re going to have one. Doing is better than not.
The second is only good between master and slave or parent and small child. For example, owner and dog. Parent and child is even a debatable point, I admit, but when they’re not yet fully humans they are still little animals you’re trying to turn into humans and every now and then “Because I say so.” will be used. Used too much, though, you’re only breeding rebellion. Frankly, even with a child from a parent that reason isn’t truly good enough.
Neither of those two phrases should ever be part of your work life or your management philosophy for other people. Unless you specifically are looking for high turnover in your employee pool and you really DO just want a series of defined task to be repeated over and over again, then you ought never use these two phrases are part of your management philosophy, no matter how tempting it may seem.
Smart people do not want to just feel like they are doing busy work or mental factory work, they want to be able to actually explore ideas and try new things. If you don’t want that, which is fine, don’t hire smart people. There are a lot of not smart people out there that want to come and do the same thing over and over again every day and not explore new ideas and concept. Smart people are also going to take more risks in trying things and that is often going to both look AND BE reckless in some regards. Without risks, though, the result is status quo and a creeping organization that only innovates and makes changes when their survival depends upon it.
