The Guilty Bystander

All businesses have challenges, opportunities and risk.

Within each of those areas are a myriad of sub categories. Revenue, margin and cost are very prominent in terms of outcomes or requests.

Grow revenue, reduce cost, improve margins, acquire new logo business, expand existing relationships and dominate the 'wallet share'.

How these are to be achieved is sometimes decided within a vacuum, something that only the chosen few are or have been privy to. Often, the only resources involved are the senior management and a select one or two from other areas of the business.

Then there are the political requirements, make sure "HaL" is invited and copied on all emails, updates and meeting minutes.

We see businesses from across the globe, some with 100 resources and others 100,000.

Flat organization charts, vast towers and verticals? Direct to market, business partners, channels, franchise or a combination.

Many times, the go to answer for some of these misses or gaps is to announce a re-organization or some resources are simply replaced with new managers, directors and similar.

The new resources often slowly introduce their select contacts from prior organizations and a new "all hands" lets get excited at the same story with different cast members is relayed.

All sound familiar?

Well...Enough is enough

Resources, colleagues, peers, clients or customers are tired and often despondent.

All levels and walks, are over looked, unheard, left wondering, left in the dark.

Yet, publicly they hear about transparency of the leadership. That the business is all of ours and to treat it as such.

Of course, this wouldn't happen at your business or where you work, but it does in a lot of other places.

The best leaders (who might not have a leadership title) are the ones that refuse to have a team of "Guilty Bystanders".

All to often 2% make the decisions for the remaining 98%, these leaders are actually fighting a losing battle.

Even the ones that from the outside that appear to have been successful, would have far superior results if they had developed, nurtured and introduced a framework and guiding principles focused on 'excellence'.

With ageing work forces and a completely new breed of resources and end-users coming through. The cultural, product and services delivery has changed and continues to morph and if you as a business are not working in line with the landscape, prepare for a rough ride indeed. Your saving grace may be that the suffering will likely be short-lived, as you may not survive.

Things have changed! When once a client would wait a week, now they expect an answer now, and if you haven't got one, they have already gone onto your competition.

I heard one of our social media team leads just last week "this is 2020, what is going on"?

When inquiring as to the matter, she replied "I had a file buffering when attaching it and it took like 7 seconds".

7 seconds? I can remember dial tone screaming bleep connections ( yes, I recall when dinosaurs ruled the earth).

They often timed out after after eleven or twelve minutes of 'Wookie yodels' and with a shrug of the shoulders; your I.T guru (the same guru that changes the ink, toner and configures new images) would comment "That's technology for ya", "Try it again, hopefully someone won't call you or it'll knock your session off again"...

I know its sounds like I must be reading from some ancient scripture, but in business terms this was not that long ago at all.

By the time some businesses are contemplating moving to SaaS, cloud technology or artificial intelligence. Others are pushing augmented reality, holograms or something else seen on 'James Bond' and the 'Black Panther'.

One massive constant, however, is that of how we want, desire and demand any service, product, widget or interaction...We all crave excellence!

When I walk in I want to be greeted with a welcoming smile. I want everywhere to look inviting, the resources to be swift, beyond courteous, knowledgeable and professional.

This is just my restaurant expectation.

By the way, the aforementioned team member (who is 22) walking in that same restaurant, decided not to dine there...it was a 20 minute wait, plant based options were minimal and with a quick look at her phone she was guided to a place one block away that had amazing reviews, apparently a world renowned avocado dip and a 15% coupon.

Things have changed, the pertinent question is "have you"?.