This too shall pass... but how will people remember what you did?

I remember, not so fondly, my first hot day as an HVAC service manager, 15 years ago. I had started in the previous winter and assumed that, since this is Canada, heating season would be much more hectic than cooling season. Wow, was I wrong! As I waited at the light to make my last turn towards the office, my cellphone rang a few minutes before 8:00 am. My general manager, Joe, asked me if I was at the office yet. That's a strange question, I thought, it was a beautiful day, and there wasn't much on the schedule because it had been a quiet week. Why was he calling me so early to see what was going on? It was on that day that I learned that heat makes people crazy. Joe went on to explain as I sat at the light that when it's cold out and your furnace is on the blink, you can plug in an electric heater and put on a sweater, but when it's hot day after day and your a/c isn't working you can only get so naked.

A couple of days later, as the heatwave dragged on, I was juggling no-cooling calls and dealing with tired service techs when an angry customer called. Her a/c hadn't been working for a couple of days, but she hadn't called it in yet. I guess she had been hoping for a miracle, and now it was my problem. "I'm sorry, ma'am," I explained, "but I don't have any more service calls available today." She wouldn't hear it, "this is an emergency!" "I realize that, but the other calls are emergencies too. The last call of the day is for an 80-year-old grandmother with a heart condition; she could die if we don't get her air conditioning fixed." "Yeah, well, I have three kids, and we haven't slept in two days. I might kill someone if you don't fix my a/c!"

Aside from this being one of my favourite stories from my time in the service trenches, I share it today to remind you that this too shall pass. In 12 weeks, cooling season will be over, and we will be trying to figure out how it sneaked up on us again. In the meantime, we have to be careful that we don't let our passions get the best of us. People will remember what we say to them in anger, and we risk people branding us as angry unreasonable people.

Dale Carnegie writes in How to Win Friends and Influence People about how Abraham Lincoln dealt with a General who disobeyed orders and allowed General Lee to escape capture. He wrote a withering rebuke and then took a deep breath, filed it away in his desk drawer, and then wrote a second more constructive letter to the General. What lesson does Lincoln's practice hold for us? Negativity and criticism aren't likely to do anything except make a person feel better for a fleeting moment. When the dust settles, a person realizes that they overreacted, but the victim of their scorn is unlikely to forget it so soon. It is better to write a Lincoln Letter, vent to the paper or email app, and then file it away. Then, take a deep breath and find a constructive way to respond to the situation. Business is a war, not a single battle, and no one wants to go to war with a tyrant.

So, the next time an employee doesn't do it just so, or a vendor disappoints, or a piece of equipment is DOA, remember that like summer, problems have a way of creeping up on us again and again. Take a deep breath, write your Lincoln Letter, and then think about how to win the war, not just this battle.