Happy Sunday Everyone:
I had an interesting week last week. I had some folks on my team out of the office so found myself more involved in some situations compared to normal, which I must say was fun. There is a balance between moving on to new challenges/roles and still knowing “I’ve got this”, it’s a confidence booster. One of those situations involved the world’s worst escrow officer. I’ll skip the details of the deal as I’m sure no one cares but the big point is a client’s experience is as good as the weakest link on the team. Every other player can be hitting on all cylinders but if one person isn’t, it throws everything off, which brings me to the simple message provided by Bill Belichick (6 super bowl wins), “DO YOUR JOB”.
“When you come here, DO YOUR JOB”, is one of the first things you see in the Patriots locker room, followed by “work hard, be attentive, and put the team first”. I love the simplicity of “do your job”. The directness of “do your job”, also requires you to take a minute to look within and ask “What is my job?” “how is my job measured?” “what does success look like in my job?”. If you know your job, you know how it’s being measured, and you know what success looks like, that’s clarity for a successful job performance, fair? Knowing your job is top down and bottom up. You, your boss, your subordinates, all need to be on the same page as to your job, your measurements, success. I know this sounds super simple but I’m thinking of so many scenarios where this simply isn’t the case. It’s something that should be discussed or looked at daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/annually. Can you imagine if you had the presence to say “how am I being measured today & what does success look like today in my job”…and you did that every day? WOW.
Back to my escrow officer. Screwed up every single step along the way. I honestly think she spent more time on the excuses for not doing her job than she did doing her job. At one point I received an email longer than Sunday Thoughts (are these too long???), with more excuses. She asked if we could talk on the phone to go over her excuses (I said “no thanks, just fix it”). All of this made me think of the times I’ve screwed up, the times I didn’t do my job. Here are some thoughts for myself and you moving forward, when you don’t do your job.
1. Acknowledge the mess, fix the mess quickly, and move on.
2. Apologize once. Multiple “I’m so sorry” is weak and leads to less and less confidence that you’ll actually fix the problem.
3. Unless you have a track record of success w/ someone, excuses simply don’t matter. Chalk it as a loss and move on. Reminder to myself when delivering an excuse that I’m only making myself feel better while the person on the other line is losing more confidence in me with every word I speak.
4. Don’t hide, deliver a plan to fix the problem, and be proactive with relevant updates until the problem is resolved.
5. Review the mess internally to minimize the chances of the mess happening again.
None of us are perfect, including/especially me. We are going to screw up but how we deal with our screwups is what defines us. I only want to work with people who take responsibility for doing their job. I can rattle off 10 people in my head right now that fit into both categories, ones that do, ones that don’t. Its A team vs. C team and its obvious. The more people you surround yourself with who know their job, do their job, and take it seriously, the more success you will find. I can honestly say every person on my team knows their job, and does their job. We weren’t always that way, we had to cut out some cancers along the way, but when you roll with people who take pride in doing their job, you can’t ever go back or accept people who don’t.
We need to ask ourselves what side of the fence we sit?