Bear On Business

A friend of mine and former (& hopefully future) co-worker is a St. Louis Cardinals fan.  Though this is more forgivable than if he pined for the Chicago White Sox, it is still quite annoying to us Cubs’ fans.  Anyway, I received an email from this wayward baseball fan.  He was kind enough to offer me constructive feedback on this morning’s blog post.  His taste in baseball teams is questionable, but his message was spot on.  

I’ll refer to this guy as John as it is a generic enough name.  To protect his identity, I will change his last name to Idaho. So I’ll call him John Idaho. Wait, that sounds made up.  Let’s see.  How about John Montana.  Yes, that is much better.  So, without further adieu, here is John Montana’s feedback:

While I completely understand your position and why you wrote [it], it can come off to folks as you always thinking ‘if I am working with you there are better uses of my time’ to the employee. This may be intended in many cases but I imagine there are instances where it is in your best interest to spend ongoing time to continue to groom and shape folks as part of their particular career maturation and growth, correct? I guess what I am saying is there may be very purposeful times where you are choosing to work with someone in a positive sense and if they read that bolded sentence they may feel a bit of angst or even resentment knowing that you are only spending time with them because you feel you have to and that you may be quietly thinking ‘I have better things to spend my time on.’

The passage John is referencing is: “So, for all of you involved with me on a professional basis, you heard it here first. If I am deeply involved in how you are doing your job, know I am doing so because I feel it is necessary. Know also that I feel it is a sub-optimal way for me to spend my time. If you complain about my micro-management, you will now hear me utter ‘performance is the price of freedom’. ”

John, thanks for bringing this to my attention.  My words are horrible.  The context of the blog post was situations when I am being perceived to micro-manage employees.  It is where I am being overly involved with suggesting to a person how they should go about doing their job.  Fortunately, I am not often in this situation today.

Telecom and business are my passions.   I love collaborating with employees/team members on all sorts of business topics.  I learn from them–like when Mark Minor took us through what he is doing on Google Maps.  I bounce ideas off of them.  This is why I do what I do. 

I know the mysterious John Montana knows this and again I thank him for bringing my attention to this wording.