You Are the Solution

Yet again the survey says that CEOs are still complaining that they can’t find good managers. 

Well, I have good new and good new.  The good news first.  I found the problem.  The good news?  You are the solution.  Now that we identified the problem, we can fix it. 

“You can solve problems. You can’t solve opportunities.” 
~ Slim Fairview. 
From, The Quotations of Slim Fairview © 2014. 
Robert Asken. All rights reserved.

Now that the legal language is out of the way….

If you don’t want to hear it from me, listen to Einstein:

“You can’t solve the problem using the same thinking you used to create the problem.”

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Then Again…

Einstein also said, “You don’t measure the intelligence of a fish by its ability to climb a tree.”

To which Slim replied, “If you want someone to climb a tree, hire a cat!”

To explain why Einstein is beloved and Slim is not, is easy.

Everyone believes that Einstein’s quotation supports his or her views. They are wrong.  

Everyone believes that Slim’s quotation does not.  They are right.

I’ve divided this article up into three parts.

• The Solution

• A Reminder

• Predictions as to why you will fail to solve your problems yet again.

Slim’s Four Rules of Communication:

• Precision

• Concision

• Enumerate 

• Specify

Change the name of Human Resources to Personnel.

Have Personnel sort the incoming resumés and forward them to the senior people in the departments where the applicants will be working if hired.

Find a new company to design and build your on-line application website—if I can’t convince you to do away with it altogether.  Hiring good managers is less expensive than hiring bad managers with that cost-effective on-line hiring system.

If you keep the on-line hiring system, make changes to the required fields to make them less constraining.  Also, use a different pre-interview psychological evaluation test or get rid of them altogether.

Fire Managers.  Worry less about employee evaluations and worry more about evaluating the managers who do the employee evaluations.  If your managers are incompetent, then their employee evaluations are worthless. 

Leadership:

“Leaders are defined by their followers.” 

“You can’t lead if you can’t manage.”

“Look behind you. If people are following you, you’re a leader. If they’re not, you’re not.” 

"In a time of stress, the employees will instinctively look to their leader.  This person is not always the boss."

~ Slim Fairview  Copyright © 2019

Eliminate leadership training programmes and seminars, the people who need them, and the people who suggest using them.  This includes the handing out of three-fold brochures and smiley-face key chains! 

Do away with time-wasting, team-building exercises. 

Replace committees with teams.  One good manager will have a team working effectively. One bad manager never will, no matter how many team building programmes you pay for.

Have the person in charge of the team choose them members of the team. 

N.B.  A team does not build a bicycle. One person builds a bicycle. A team builds a thousand bicycles.

Teamwork is for Teams.

REMINDER

You are the one complaining you can’t find good managers. 

You keep looking in the same places. 

You keep using the same process. 

You keep complaining. 

You are the problem 

You are the boss. 

You change the way you do things. 

You change the way your company does things. 


SLIM PREDICTS 

You will delegate the job. (Read: abrogate responsibility.) 

Your delegate will form a committee and call it a team. 

You will approve the same failed thinking to solve the problem that was used to create the problem. 

You will continue to have problems. 

You will say, “Slim’s advice won’t work, can’t work, doesn’t work, didn’t work.  

You will accept the responsibility instead of taking the blame. 

You will say, “Don’t play the blame game.”  

You will say, “There is no “I” in team.”  

You will say, “Winners never quite and quitters never win.” 

You will hire the same type of people to solve the problem using the same type of thinking but under a different name.  

“Consensus-building is “Group-Think” built by a consultant.” ~ Slim Fairview  

You will begin consensus-building.  

You will continue to have problems.  

Conclusion 

In my PowerPoint Presentation,

“Global Management: A shift in the paradigm of corporate America”   

I showed several organisational charts and listed their flaws. 

I also explained “Group Norms.”  View the presentation.  It is neither that long, nor that complicated.  

Rethink the way you rethink the problem. 

Rethink the way you rethink the solution. 


Slim Fairview’s Empirical Method of Analysis 

Did you try it your way? 

Yes. 

Did things get more high, good, better?  

No.  

Did things get more low, bad, worse?  

Yes.  

Conclusion?  

Stop doing things your way.  


Plan B:  Stop Complaining.  


If you find anything here to be helpful, please don’t hesitate to send me a really tricked-out Mac Book and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note.  


If not, at least send me a post card.  I don't collect stamps, but the post cards will make for interesting conversation the next time I go to "Seniors". 

Bob Asken

Box 33
Pen Argyl, PA 18072  


Sincerest regards, 

Slim 

slimfairview@yahoo.com 

Copyright © 2014 Robert Asken  

All rights reserved.

Consultants: Credentials or Qualifications?

Consultants: Credentials or Qualifications?


Recently, what caught my attention was a discussion about people graduating with MBAs who want to go into consulting. Isn’t consulting a later-in-your-career choice?  Something you do after a few decades of experience?  The way a retired General working for defence contractors after decades of military experience as opposed to a 2^nd Lieutenant graduating from West Point choosing to go into consulting as an alternative to going into the Army?

Case in point:  The GSA did not waste money hiring jugglers and clowns.  The GSA wasted money hiring consultants to teach teamwork and leadership skills by having employees build bicycles.

Why?

Well, what are the deliverables?  The target dates?  The measure of value added?  The argument could be made that we are dealing with intangibles. I will refute that later.


The Back Story:

A few decades ago, I participated in an exercise for a class on teamwork.  The class was broken up into groups of four or five.

The exercise?  You are stranded on an islands with a list of provisions that you are to rank in order of importance.  Then to explain your decisions.  Then to discuss all the decisions to come up with a list.  In addition:  The weather is damp. It will get colder in the night. And we are told that there are no right or wrong answers.  The purpose is to learn to work as a team.

Briefly: a knife, a rope, a gun, a cigarette lighter with no fluid, a bottle of whisky.

I listened. I waited.  I began my list”

1. Cigarette lighter with no fluid.

2. Bottle of whisky—

AHA!!!!!  Whisky does not make you warmer. It only makes you feel warmer because you are losing body heat because alcohol dilates the blood vessels….!

True. But…

1.  That was not my point.

2.  The interrupter did not wait for me to finish speaking

3. The interrupter interrupted to repudiate my point based on an assumption

4.  The interrupter did not ask me why I made the rankings.

 
My Choices:

I was a Boy Scout. It is difficult enough to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together or by using flint and steel with tinder under the best of conditions.  It is damp. It will get cold.  The Whisky burns.  No claim of right or wrong.  Only the failed procedure.  Or is it?

You can figure out most of the above yourself.  The “aha” moment for me was when I realised that the instructions said, “There are no right or wrong answers.”  Yes there are.

Remember, “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?”  I won’t go there. Why not? Simple.

You make the right choices, you live.

You make the wrong choices, you die!

Simple? 

No.

Simple!


In Business It Is The Same.

Remember Ron Johnson?  CEO at JCP?

Johnson tried to sell, “Everyday Low Pricing.”

Consumers want to buy, “Coupons and Discounts.”

Johnson tried to convince the customers to buy what he wanted to sell instead of selling what the customers wanted to buy.

Now, Bill Ackman, successful investor, has many credentials.  In fact, he has about a billion credentials.  Still, he appears on Mad Money, with Jim Cramer, in an effort to sell Penney-Stocks. I will not belabour the point.

Credentials.

Diet books, get rich quick books, and self help books, do not work.  If they did, then, as a nation, we would all be skinny, rich, and happy.  Instead, as a nation, we are fat, poor, and polarised.

The authors all have credentials.  They all sell books. They are all successful.  Like Bill Ackma, they are successful at being successful.

How many millionaires and billionaires do you know, who became millionaires and billionaires, by reading books written by millionaires and billionaires?  Get the point?


Deliverables:

 
Case 1

“Hello, Bigelow?  Highpower here. Standwell Industries.  The reason why I am calling is because the consulting firm of Seniors and Elder LLC put you down as a reference….”

“Great Job, Highpower.  In 2011, we had 41 incidents.  In 2012, that dropped to 27. And in the first half of this year, only 8.   And production went up 10% in 2012 and 10% in the first half of 2013.”

 
Case 2

“Hello, Downhill?  Highpower here. Standwell Industries. The reason I’m calling is  because the consulting firm of Young, Turk, and Wiseacre put you down as a reference….”

Enough said? 

No.

Enough Said!


If you find anything here to be helpful in terms of marketing your consulting firm, or saving money by rethinking your choices….

Please do not hesitate to send me a really tricked out MacPro and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note.

 
Warmest regards,

Slim

slimfairview@yahoo.com

LinkedIn Profile:   http://www.linkedin.com/in/slimfairview


Copyright © 2013. Slim Fairview

All rights reserved.