According to my recently departed professor, the famous Father of Modern Management, Peter F. Drucker, if we really want to get ahead, we should Study success, and not failure. This is counter-intuitive advice, but sound advice, nonetheless. Examine most of the literature on human relations at work, and youll find it is problem oriented, failure oriented, if you will. We focus, mostly, on improving relations with difficult people, and even I have added to this burgeoning data base with articles of my own, and a book, Please Dont Shoot The Messenger! that is about breaking bad news to resistant people. Why dont we take some time to study people who are a pleasure to work with? Possibly, we could imitate them, and make life a lot more pleasant on the job and off. For instance, I had the pleasure of working with a marketing manager at Xerox who was nothing less than great. I devised a telemarketing script, and without hesitation, he volunteered to test its effectiveness in front of ten of his colleagues. Calmly strapping on his headset, he dialed number after number, and he quite happily racked up success after success. Instantly, this made me credible, and my overall program was accepted. Had he not done this so agreeably, and so heroically, I would have encountered much more resistance to the new methods I was introducing. There are others like him, but they just dont get the recognition or the analytical attention they deserve. Lets focus on success, as Drucker suggested, and Im sure well all be better for it! |
