Don’t Wear the “Blame & Complain” T-shirt
A while back I was sitting at a coffee shop with a friend and our conversation took us to the subject of people’s unwillingness to take responsibility for their decisions and actions and their tendency to blame others and complain about all their problems. My friend said, as he set down his latte, “If I could buy these people a custom t-shirt, it would say in big bold letters, ‘Blame & Complain.'”Now that’s a t-shirt no leader wants to be offered. To blame and to complain are the opposite attitudes and behaviors of people who are making a difference in the lives other others and in the world.
Instead of blaming others for problems, leaders take responsibility when things don’t go right even when it’s not directly their fault. The legendary college football coach, Bear Bryant, use to say “If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it.” Blame, self-justification, and skirting responsibility takes leaders and their teams nowhere good. It only leads to loss of credibility, respect and broken trust ending in fractured relationships. And all those places create a spiral of poor performance which will never be broken but only exasperated by blaming and complaining.
As to complaining, leaders don’t waste a New York minute complaining because it doesn’t do one thing to solve problems. A leader’s job is to help their team move forward, to tackle problems and to solve them. This takes hard work, time, energy and focus, all of which get diluted with complaining. As I often tell our team “If it wasn’t for problems and obstacles we face every day, SpringHill wouldn’t need most of us. Our job is to solve, deal and prevent problems so why complain about them; it’s why most of us have jobs.”
So don’t ever be tempted to wear the “Blame & Complain” t-shirt instead always be quick to put on the “Responsible & Will Solve It” shirt, it’s the one t-shirt leaders are always willing put on.
Plan Your Work then Work Your Plan, Leading the SpringHill Way – Part 2
If successful leaders manage things and lead people and never confuse the two, then it’s absolutely critical that leaders effectively manage the resources entrusted to their stewardship. At the core of good management is planning. This is why at SpringHill we like to remind ourselves to “plan your work then work your plan”.Plan Your Work:
So what does planning your work look like? It always starts at the highest level (answering the 6 Key Questions) then works down to the actual steps and tasks necessary to accomplish a goal, project or a dream. At SpringHill after we’ve affirmed the answers to the 6 Key Questions we build a 3 year plan (that’s updated annually). We followed the 3 year plan with a 1 year, seasonal (quarterly), monthly and weekly goals and plans which have ever-increasing detail.
For individual planning, whether it’s work or personal, it can and should follow the same logic of breaking down long-term goals into annual, seasonal, monthly, weekly and even daily tasks and goals. For work plans we encourage our staff to align their plans and goals with the plans and goals of their team and the organization.
Work Your Plan:
However we always need to remember that the only reason to plan is to accomplish a goal or dream. So it’s absolutely critical to break down goals and plans into actionable steps so we can answer the question “what’s important right now?” When we answer this question then we’re ready to work our plan so it becomes a reality.
I also like to remind to myself and our team that we should spend most of our time working our plan. Because, at the end of the day, we’re not interested in being good at just dreaming big (anyone can do that), but being good at making big dreams a reality.
What’s Important Right Now?
After the first game of our boys’ high school’s district basketball tournament (which they won) my son Mitch and I talked about his performance. He wasn’t happy in how he played and had begun to worry about its implications for next year’s season.In light of the district championship game two days away, I asked him, “in terms of basketball, what’s important right now?” He looked at me with this dawn of realization and said “to win Friday night’s game.” To which I said “You’re right, it’s the only thing you should be thinking about right now, because winning Friday’s game is the most important thing you and your team can do right now. You’ll have plenty of time to think about next season when this season’s done.”
Mitch then looked at me and said “I’ve just had one of those ah-hah moments. ‘What’s important right now?’ is the question I need to ask myself every morning.”
And of course Mitch is right, “What’s Important Right Now?” is a question every organization, every person in every organization, and frankly, all people need to ask themselves. It’s the question that keeps the right things in front of us and keeps the distracting issues off to the side. (Click here to see other important questions leaders and organizations need to ask)
So the next day Mitch printed and framed this question “What’s Important Right Now?” and hung it in his room so he’d be focused on the right things, every day. Will you follow Mitch’s lead and ask yourself “what’s important right now“, every day? You and your team will thankful for the clarity it brings.
