How to secure your career with a fruit ?

Yep, you read it well but no, it's not a what it sounds like.

We are all operating in different businesses going highs and lows (more lows recently apparently) and have to report, how to put it nicely ?..... "unexpected headwinds".

That's an uneasy task to explain basically that you failed your targets and, after the 2 typical excuses ("this is the fault of my predecessor" and "the economical environment is unfavorable") you may be looking for a different approach.

Lucky you, readers of these lines, I will introduce a magic tool I have observed used by many successful leaders "the watermelon KPI" ! That is green on the outside and red on the inside.

I noticed some very incompetent leaders remaining in positions for decades using this tool and this is how it is working in brief:

• Take your more critical KPI and change the hard number it gives to turn it into a beautiful "colored dot".
• Explain your audience that visual management is far better for understanding a situation than hard numbers (at first glance, yes).
• Take the bunch of reasons why you / your team failed so far and sugar coat it with a lot of explanations about how "the issues are about to being fixed" and "that's normal life of a project" and "the team is working hard on it" and so on.
• Note that these are called "fuses". In case your smoke curtain tactics is failing, they will provide right away the corresponding explanations "the team failed to detect and fix the issue" and "the project scope has not considered the issue" and "some team members are not able to anticipate and fix the issue". Note how these explanation are all exterior to you.
• You just setup a great backup plan to your career and, after firing the hard working team members you made responsible for your failure, you will be safe and on the road again for a new disaster.

Of course, if you are a team member, seeing your leader reporting these beautiful green dots on the outside and knowing they are red burning hot on the inside, you might feel your career will end shortly but that's a fair way to protect your gentle boss.

To put it simply, this system will allow you to claim the success if your team make it to the goal and to protect you otherwise.

Dear reader, you may decide to follow this procedure or to do the exact opposite, it's your choice in the end and your conscience.

As a recruiter, I am spotting this kind of person with a very direct set of questions:

• What did you accomplish personally (not your team) you are most proud of ?
• Tell me your worst failure and how you managed a way out of it.

Any unclear answer is the sign of a "watermelon KPI expert" and for me that is a