rabbijaffe

Priorities are a concept that Americans (and the world in general) seem to be rather clueless about.

We live in a world where we watched with bated breath while dozens of Iranians died in the fight for their freedom. Well, we did… until Michael Jackson died, of course. Now it feels like Iran fell off the map.

I was teaching a 6th grade class this past year about a section of the Bible. We discussed all sorts of interesting scenarios and the laws that might follow. In order to make the classes more fun and memorable for my students I try to make my scenarios as visual and wild as possible.

One case involved a man who was entrusted to watch over his neighbor’s cocker spaniel. One day as he was sitting there watching the pooch, a lion which had escaped from the local zoo jumped through the window and ate the dog. (The question at hand was whether or not the dog’s watcher was held responsible for its death.)

My students cried out in horror. They were completely freaked out by the example I had given.    

I enquired why they were so freaked out now as opposed to all the other crazy scenarios I had created:

Them: How can you speak of a dog getting killed?

Me: Hold on. We’ve been doing scenarios for weeks now. When we spoke about humans getting murdered, nobody got upset about it.

Them: But most of us have dogs!

Me: (In disbelief) And none of you have parents, siblings, friends!?!

And no matter how much we discussed this, they did not get why this irked me.

And judging by some of the research out there, whoever is reading this right now also migt not understand why this irked me.

But I digress…

This post is really a continuation from my previous post about a new employer who wishes to hop into a new scenario and strip everything away to rebuild things from scratch.

When the new boss-man decides things need to change, his next step is (or at least should be) to prioritize.

My mental picture, which inspired the photograph at the top of the post (a $64 stainless steel stapler), is the new CEO who makes the list of everything he feels needs to be improved upon, and one of the things on his list is his dislike of the company’s staplers.

So he spends two hours on the internet researching in order to find out which are the best staplers out there.

Then he spends a half hour on the phone with a sales rep trying to finalize the company’s purchase of the staplers.

Later he will have a 45-minute meeting with his staff to discuss the new staplers, culminating in everyone signing a form upon the receipt of their new stapler stating they are personally responsible if their new stapler is lost or damaged.

And also culminating in a staff of people wondering why the company hired this bozo.

This might sound like an overly exaggerated scenario…

That is, of course, unless I’m describing someone you are either employed to, or were employed to in the past.

This example from my life still makes me laugh. I was once the employee of a brand new principal who made a semi-arbitrary new rule that on a specific monthly holiday all students were required to wear white shirts.

In theory it was a nice and respectful idea.

In practice:

a. Kids make mistakes

b. It’s only an OK idea

c. Might be nice to focus your attention on slightly more important issues when starting in such a position

So the first holiday rolled around. Probably a dozen or more students forgot about the whole white shirt thing.

No big deal, right?

He made them sit in an in-school suspension until a parent, who was probably busy at work, was able to go to the school and bring them a white shirt. Some students missed half their classes that day!

Everyone, as you can imagine, was very angry at the principal.

But did he stop there? No way. Months later, same deal. Several students forget, several students suspended, several parents peeved.

And when all the smoke clears, what do we have? Tons of frustrated students, who in no way appreciate the policy (and laugh at the principal behind his back). Scores of really ticked off parents, who in no way appreciate the policy (and laugh at the principal behind his back). A bunch of frustrated teachers wondering why their students are missing class to sit in the principal’s office. And: No improvement in the memory of students vis-a-vis their white shirts.

And for what!?!? What if he had succeeded? Big deal! This was objectively as unimportant of an issue as one could imagine. It wasn’t even in the galaxy of what this man should have been focusing his time and attention upon. And he didn’t get it. And I’m not sure if has yet figured this one out.

You’re in a new leadership position and want to make some changes? Fine. It’s going to be a lot of work. Figure out what are the main issues you would like to work on, and for now let everything else go.

And for God’s sake, try and look very closely and objectively at what should have never been focused on in the first place. 

Trackback URI | Comments RSS