It’s damn hard not to complain these days, don’t you think? A friend of mine sent me an email recently about his New Year’s resolution to be more positive. “Good luck with that,” Sponge Bob says in his nasal voice.
Desire doesn’t make it so. Action does.
As an immediate problem solver, my friend addressed some of the whining coming his way at work. Somehow, perhaps because he has a soft side that encourages people to come visit his office to voice opinions on whatever dang subject they want, he listens to his employees for way too long. That frustrates him. In fact, he probably wants to complain about it, but not being a complainer himself, he decided to do something about it instead.
He solved the problem by creating a sign to post over his door. His office is now designated a “complaint-free” zone.
Have I mentioned that I hold this friend in high esteem? This idea borders on genius. He should be promoted to head corporate guru and given a 500 percent raise and his pension should be immediately quadrupled. Even that may not be enough compensation for the value he has added to his organization by sharing and promoting this concept.
So far, there has only been early feedback. Traffic to his office has stopped except for people coming in to address issues in a positive way. In other words, people come in and speak to him about what needs to get done to finish a project, meet a deadline, accomplish something that moves the organization forward.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that people have stopped complaining. They could quite easily now be complaining about him behind closed doors in another part of the building, “Man, my manager is such a jerk. He used to listen to me whine and now he won’t let us talk like that in his office. What do you think I should do, Janice?”
Janice, if she is smart, will leave it alone. She’ll nod her head and reply, “Get your job done and explain to your boss some new ideas you have for contributing to the bottom line and how that will increase our membership while eliminating public criticism about our hiring program.”
Eliminating complaining is probably impossible. But with this tactic, my friend is taking a giant step forward to creating a corporate complaint-free culture. What nirvana that could be.
Among other categories, he has forbidden complaints in some of the following areas: Accounting; clients; colleagues; computers; equipment; executive management; family; marketing; training; meetings; purchasing processes and workflow systems.
I would add the following: Bathrooms; strategic direction; declining health care benefits; the weather; office space; cell phone policies; upper management perks; travel restrictions; bad coffee in the break room; garbage in the parking lot; air conditioning or heating being too high or too low.
The office of my friend remains open for discussing ideas, solutions to problems, job challenges and general “pleasant chatting” (love the phrase). There is a difference between presenting a real problem that the business can solve and just kvetching.
Complaining is not banned. It can be done outside his office. I’m sure he’ll be drawn into those conversations with a higher degree of frequency than he might like, probably because he is a good listener. That’s his biggest problem. He should learn to ignore people more, but that doesn’t come with his territory.
So he is stuck with putting up notes to his people, and he reserves the right to add to his list at any point. I’m looking forward to hearing the longer term results.
Desire doesn’t make it so. Action does.
As an immediate problem solver, my friend addressed some of the whining coming his way at work. Somehow, perhaps because he has a soft side that encourages people to come visit his office to voice opinions on whatever dang subject they want, he listens to his employees for way too long. That frustrates him. In fact, he probably wants to complain about it, but not being a complainer himself, he decided to do something about it instead.
He solved the problem by creating a sign to post over his door. His office is now designated a “complaint-free” zone.
Have I mentioned that I hold this friend in high esteem? This idea borders on genius. He should be promoted to head corporate guru and given a 500 percent raise and his pension should be immediately quadrupled. Even that may not be enough compensation for the value he has added to his organization by sharing and promoting this concept.
So far, there has only been early feedback. Traffic to his office has stopped except for people coming in to address issues in a positive way. In other words, people come in and speak to him about what needs to get done to finish a project, meet a deadline, accomplish something that moves the organization forward.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that people have stopped complaining. They could quite easily now be complaining about him behind closed doors in another part of the building, “Man, my manager is such a jerk. He used to listen to me whine and now he won’t let us talk like that in his office. What do you think I should do, Janice?”
Janice, if she is smart, will leave it alone. She’ll nod her head and reply, “Get your job done and explain to your boss some new ideas you have for contributing to the bottom line and how that will increase our membership while eliminating public criticism about our hiring program.”
Eliminating complaining is probably impossible. But with this tactic, my friend is taking a giant step forward to creating a corporate complaint-free culture. What nirvana that could be.
Among other categories, he has forbidden complaints in some of the following areas: Accounting; clients; colleagues; computers; equipment; executive management; family; marketing; training; meetings; purchasing processes and workflow systems.
I would add the following: Bathrooms; strategic direction; declining health care benefits; the weather; office space; cell phone policies; upper management perks; travel restrictions; bad coffee in the break room; garbage in the parking lot; air conditioning or heating being too high or too low.
The office of my friend remains open for discussing ideas, solutions to problems, job challenges and general “pleasant chatting” (love the phrase). There is a difference between presenting a real problem that the business can solve and just kvetching.
Complaining is not banned. It can be done outside his office. I’m sure he’ll be drawn into those conversations with a higher degree of frequency than he might like, probably because he is a good listener. That’s his biggest problem. He should learn to ignore people more, but that doesn’t come with his territory.
So he is stuck with putting up notes to his people, and he reserves the right to add to his list at any point. I’m looking forward to hearing the longer term results.