Excerpt
from the book
HELP WANTED (Introduction)
If you ran an honest ad for your job, would
it look anything like this?
MANAGER WANTED Must
be willing to: sell soul to the company,
work 70-80 hours a week for little more
than minimum wage, miss children's growing
up, lose marriage, start drinking too much,
live with stress and die of a coronary at
age 53.
Do you think your phone
would be ringing off the hook with eager
applicants? Of course not . . . and unless
this is your idea of a good time, you don't
have to put up with this sort of life, either.
Easy to say, but what
else can you do?
My background is in
the restaurant business, a labor-intensive,
service-oriented industry that certainly
has a reputation for demanding incredibly
long hours from its managers. For that reason,
most of the personal examples I give will
be from that industry although I think you
will find similar examples in your own experience.
The management model
I learned was definitely one of 80+ hour
weeks. I graduated from one of the country's
premier hospitality degree programs, yet
even in school -- as in every foodservice
job I held -- I was taught that this is
a killer business where you need to work
18 hours a day, eight days a week. I was
told if I was not willing to make that kind
of time commitment, I should pursue another
line of work.
I never questioned it.
I suspect most businesses have a similar
myth passed down from one manager to the
next. You may have bought into an idea like
this, too.
The cost of misunderstanding
The cost we pay for this lack of understanding
is staggering. It is measured in lower profits,
reduced productivity, burnout, turnover,
broken marriages, substance abuse and an
impossible level of stress.
The sad truth is that
a majority of the problems most managers
deal with day after days are not inherent
problems of their industry but rather very
predictable symptoms of their level of understanding
and their idea of what constitutes effective
management.
Even as I was working
myself to death (120 hours a week in one
job!), I couldn't help but feel there just
had to be an easier way to do what I was
doing. I am definitely a hard worker but
I am not a masochist, so I started looking
for other approaches that might be more
effective.
A new model
Perhaps because I was actively looking for
a better way, I crossed paths with some
folks who were doing breakthrough work in
understanding how individuals and organizations
really function.
They helped me understand
what I was doing in a different way and
when I saw a bigger picture, I was suddenly
off the old management merry-go-round. The
human part of my work became effortless
and the difference in my effectiveness was
earthshaking!
I know it is easy to
think, "In your dreams. It just isn't that
easy."
Remember Columbus
If you feel that way, let me remind you
that in 1491, the world was flat! Everybody
knew the world was flat -- it was a fact
of life, yet just a year later, it was impossible
to hold that view. So that little voice
in your head that says, "There's GOT to
be an easier way to do this," is right.
Once your understanding shifts, your life,
professionally and personally, will change
forever. A blinding flash of the obvious
You already have the
answers but you just don't see them yet
because they are not where you're used to
looking. The shift comes when you recognize
simple, common sense truths that have been
right in front of you all along but which,
because of the way you were trained to think,
you never fully understood before.
This book will examine
the principles that can help you make this
shift for yourself . . . if you want to
. . . so buckle up and let's get started!
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