One of my clients, a VP who runs operations for a mid-size manufacturer, has known for months that one of his directors probably isn’t going to make it in the role. He’s told me so, almost word for word, in three separate sessions. Each time he adds the same line: I just need a little more information before I move.
A few weeks ago, I made a mistake in front of a room full of people. A real one. The kind that sticks with you.
A client of mine runs a hundred-person operation. He’s smart, capable, and has spent three years learning to manage himself under pressure. Last spring he sat across from me, and he could not get a single clear sentence out about a conversation he needed to have with his board.
She’d built the thing for years, and it had worked, until it didn’t anymore. Nothing broke all at once. The model that used to work just stopped working, slowly enough that nobody could point to the exact day it happened.
She’d built the thing for years, and it had worked, until it didn’t anymore. Nothing broke all at once. The model that used to work just stopped working, slowly enough that nobody could point to the exact day it happened.
A quarter-million dollars of equipment ended up wedged under an overpass. The employee driving it had only been on the job three weeks, and no one had checked his route. That’s what I heard first, before I found out who had made the decision to hand him that assignment in the first place.
Six weeks in, the integrator has to fire a crew lead over a pattern, not a single mistake: the same problem showing up a third time, after two separate conversations where the guy said he understood and then went right back to waiting to be told.
Three weeks into his commitment to letting the team figure it out, the integrator gets a call at 4:15 on a Thursday. A deadline that can’t move, a crew lead standing in front of him with half a plan, and no time.
Remember the construction company integrator from last week’s article? The one who stopped getting out of his truck to fix things? He told me something a few sessions later that stuck with me. He said the hard part was never deciding to stop rescuing.
He’s sitting in his truck at 6:40 in the morning, parked where he can see the crew, but they can’t see him, watching a scheduling problem unfold that he could fix with one phone call. Two weeks ago, he would have already made it. His hand is actually on the door handle. He doesn’t open it.