Death By A Thousand Paper-Cuts

If your firm thriving or dying? If the answer is not "thriving", there might not be an in-between. Stale is dying and you will never reach the highest possible levels of success.

Thriving does not mean life at work will be easy or that you and your co-workers will always agree on every issue, but moving forward is a must. You must all know the direction of your firm and agree on what equalls "success".

I once worked for a company that had a history of amazing achievement. It was a fun place to work (high pressure, but still very enjoyable). While the senior managers did not always see eye-to-eye, and occasionally had heated (and public) disagreements, they had common goals. Profits soared.

Years later they lost sight of those goals and became divided on almost every issue imaginable.

The End.

How about your place of business? Does senior management have complimentary goals or are they competing with eachother? Are there individuals on your staff who enjoy seeing other on the team fail? Is name-calling and finger-pointing the accepted practice?

If a senior executive (or group of executives) left your company to join a competitor, how would the rest of the staff view the event? Would this be an unfortunate incident that would pull everyone together with pin-point focus.... or would it destroy the morale of the whole team? This is an important question to ask yourself because in today's business climate this could happen at any moment. To believe this could happen to you is burying your head in the sand.

Too many business professionals allow their own egos to dominate their decisions. You need to pull your team together and find out what conflicts are boiling under the surface. Discussing these issues in advance will help you when you face a crisis (or it will prevent the crises altoghether).

But everyone in your company has to check their ego at the door. This is easier said than done. Determining the common goals of a professional services firm is a bit like hearding cats. Everyone has an opinion, and usually they look down on anyone with other points of view. If you cannot decide what success looks like, then you will either stagnate or fail to reach your success.

It will be death by a thousand paper-cuts.

Have A Great Day.

Thom Singer
www.thomsinger.com
thom@thomsinger.com