Calling it Tight: Running a Tight Ship

Someone’s late for a meeting. Nobody calls the person on it. Next week, three people are late. That’s no coincidence. Eventually, there won’t be a meeting in the entire organization that starts within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.

Sales reports aren’t done accurately or aren’t timely. Well, it’s your top producer so…what can you say?

Then, the top achiever stops doing the reports all together. So do the rest of your team members. Sales take a nosedive. Your sales team blames the economy and the competition.

Yeah, right.

You have checklists required to make sure people are in compliance. Somebody pushes the limit, thinking, “Gosh, I was busy, so I didn’t do it.” Suddenly nobody is doing their checklists and your organization resembles the “friendly zoo.”

What’s wrong? Same problem.

Everybody knows the rules, but no one is calling others on the breach of rules. Your organization becomes rule-free and loose. How could it not?

If you look at every successful organization, you see a group in which every team member calls every other team member on it whenever a service standard is breached, a deadline missed, or an honor code violated as defined by your values and behaviors.

Struggling organizations have folks who just want to be “nice.” They let it all go—which means, of course, that others will let THEM go when they mess up. Now the whole group is letting it all go—and in no time flat, you’re back to blaming the economy.

It is not management’s job alone to call people on their “stuff”—it is the role of every person within the organization. Only by doing that can you have any hope of progression. Repeating yesterday will NOT create different results. Management’s job is to make sure every person is calling every person on any violation and pushing each other to greatness.

People need to understand that it isn’t “mean” to challenge each other—it’s uncaring and unloving to NOT challenge each other for not doing what is required. It keeps others “small.”