Thinking Business
Seven Strategies from the
“Think-Free Guide to Managing”
Strategy #1: Treat Employees Like Interchangeable Pegs
Just like wooden pegs, employees can be yanked from one spot and shoved into another. After all, if you’ve seen one peg, you’ve seen them all. Treat employees like inventory, perhaps using the first-in-first-out rule—each time a new employee is hired, fire the most senior employee. The beauty of this rule is that it also saves costs by replacing a high salary with a low one. Or, why not borrow from the clean-out-your-clutter gurus and get rid of any employee you haven’t seen in six months?
Strategy #2: Never Define Expectations
Be as vague as possible when asked for explanations or expectations. If you never define expectations, you will never be wrong. Create secret standards and then punish those who don’t live up to them. If questioned, employ a useful weasel phrase like “You know what I’m looking for” or “A good manager would figure it out.”
Strategy #3: Believe Your Own Press
Assume that people have ceased disagreeing with you because of your sudden attack of brilliance—not your positional power. If someone does dare to express a difference of opinion, be sure to make an example of them. Public floggings are a preferred method.
Strategy #4: Treat Your Distributors and Vendors with Disdain
When your product reaches monopoly status, use it as an opportunity to throw your weight around, dictating terms to anyone who has the gall to want to do business with you. After all, you never believed that old saying: “Goes around, comes around.”
Strategy #5: Never Admit Mistakes
If someone dares to accuse you of making a corporate mistake, use the “everyone else does it” defense. Mom surely wasn’t talking about business when she said, “If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you jump, too?”
Strategy #6: Yes, Virginia, There IS a Silver Bullet Solution
If a solution can’t be explained on a single piece of paper, it’s obviously too complex to be successful in your business. Instead, hold out for those silver bullet solutions, the ones that solve every problem in the business with one tiny, inexpensive change.
Strategy #7: Don’t Invest in Anything Not Bolted to the Ground
If you can’t see it, touch it, control it, and crunch the numbers, it’s obviously a poor investment. Intangibles and intellectual property are economic myths, sure to be debunked at any moment.
Shannon Bradford
is a writer and coach, helping people learn how to master their
brains to succeed in their careers and businesses. She is the author
of Brain Power (Wiley, 2002).
© 2002 Shannon Bradford
Ready to rev up
your productivity,
whip procrastination,
accomplish more?
Thinkology®
Most Popular...