FACT: everyone thinks they are smarter than the other! Why waste that time worrying about little things in life? When working with someone do you find it frustrating that a person is acting like they know everything but you seem to do all the work? While working with a client and a few of his partners on a consult, I realized that they had a big problem: “No one valued each other’s intellectual ability”
Fact is they didn’t trust each other. Big problem don’t you think?
I was standing in a typical example of a person not respecting the other thinking they were always right and always smarter. This applied for each of the partners on to each other… further this, it trickled down to the whole team of employees! Thought I was in Ramsy’s Kitchen Nightmares…
What did we do? We had a session on what everyone is good at looking at their strengths and weaknesses. Surprisingly, they all had both segments. What a relief.
We started talking all together and analyzed the opportunity cost for each person’s time spent on what the other was doing, trying to make it better or redoing work. The ROI on everything was causing them to be so inefficient that they were latterly bleeding their wallets dry. Further that, they had given up on the business and wanted to end it.
The process was simple:
- State what you are good at and what you like to do, then focus on it
- State what you are NOT good at and what you DO NOT like to do, then simply don’t do it
- Mind your business over a period of 3 to 4 weeks while everything is being monitored
- Analyze the performance in a meeting
- Figure out a solution and implement it if required
Point is that we spend too much time in other people’s business. We spend too much time trying to fix the other instead of trusting them and helping them develop that skill… Trust is crucial especially in a growing company. If there isn’t any then it must be developed or an exit of one person must occur.
