December 18, 2014: Survivial of a Common Worst Case Scenario

On the last blog, we discussed success and how it may be defined in the workplace.  Your homework from that post was to list up the ways your work could be considered a failure even though these criteria are not listed on your goals and objectives.  Obviously, death, injury, tornadoes and bankruptcy are true worst-case scenarios.  For our purposes on the topic, however, worst-case simply means a situation with a potentially large negative impact to your career.

Faced with what many would consider a worst-case scenario, what can you do?  In many cases, as you look through your list, the answer might be 'nothing'.  Nobody can do everything perfectly.  The modern business climate does not afford anyone the time or money to fix every gap or meet every need.  We are all forced to prioritize.  First we have to decide what must be done vs what should be done.  Then we have to go through the list of what must be done to decide what needs attention on a given day.

Many of my worst-case scenarios were completely out of my control.  I may have noticed something that I want to fix, like a training gap.  If someone from headquarters does a thorough audit, they would find that my team is far behind in training.  If I've noticed the problem but haven't been able to free people up to attend training, all I can offer is the lame, "I noticed this already, but haven't been able to send people."  Which is just as weak an excuse as it sounds.  What the other party hears is, "I know about this, but I don't care enough to take action."

As an individual, you are limited in your power.  Particularly as a front-line supervisor, your options to respond directly to such critiques from headquarters are limited.  If you are able to address an issue yourself, you should of course do it.  If you are powerless to do it (say that you need to sway the opinion of an executive), you must find someone who is not powerless to do it.

Wait, what?  In these cases, networking is key to success.  If you do not know the executive well, you need to be friends with someone who is or who can effectively advocate for your cause.  To a certain extent, this is playing office politics.  In another way, it is a simple recognition of the human condition.  How is that the case?

Executives (and everyone else with an axe to grind) are people.  People have a limited amount of time and patience.  If an executive sees a report and doesn't like something, he may ask a question.  Maybe he's just curious.  Maybe he thinks it's really a problem.  In any case, the executive probably does not have time to hear your valid reasoning.  We'll discuss why this is the case in a later post.  So what you need is someone the executive knows and trusts who does have the time to discuss the issue with you and can take it to the executive and influence his opinion.

There are a few ways this can happen.  Let's assume your contact is part of the executive's common circle of coworkers: they see each other on a regular basis, and have friendly relations.  Your contact could ask the exec about the issue, and find out if it's curiosity or concern that prompted the question.  She could vouch for you to the executive, something simple like, "I know Mike, and he has a good plan to address this."  Or (and this is more difficult) she could follow a completely different line of questioning: "Why are you concerned about this?"  Maybe the executive is not concerned about the training gap per se, but he sees it as an example of letting things fall through the cracks.  Perhaps your contact would suggest a different report that shows all of the objectives that are being accomplished.  Or perhaps the executive is right.  Lastly, and most effectively, you can take the added attention as an opportunity to ask for help.

Yes, added executive attention is often a positive thing.  In the training gap scenario, you may not have enough people to complete necessary business if you send some away to training.  So you can ask for backfill while your people are out.  Certainly you should have asked for it before, but remember, this is a worst-case scenario.  When you receive unexpected negative/scrutinizing attention, make it into a positive whenever you can.  Think yourself into a solutions-based mindset and come up with reasonable solutions that the executive could provide to help solve the problem.

We'll explore this topic some more in the coming weeks.