By: Jim Roddy, President & CEO at the RSPA
My summer job during high school was working at our local zoo. No, I wasn’t shoveling elephant poop; I worked in guest services, frequently staffing the zoo’s main concession stand.
An experience there one sunny morning has stuck with me for years and shaped me as a leader.
The Director of Guest Services – the supposed adult among us kids – stopped by the stand to make sure everything was ready for business. When she grabbed the sno-kone machine’s metal scooper, she accidentally shattered the machine’s clear light bulb, breaking it into several pieces which fell into the crushed ice below.
She picked out all the shards she could see despite our suggestion to discard all the ice and thoroughly rinse the machine. She replied that she was sure she got everything, and if we threw out the ice now we couldn’t sell any cones when guests arrived.
When she left, the all-teenage staff unanimously voted to overrule her decision despite putting our jobs at risk. We immediately dumped all the ice, cleaned the machine, and started crushing new ice. We also melted the evidence of discarded ice and crossed our fingers she wouldn’t come back soon.
Can you imagine if we followed her orders and learned the hard way she didn’t pick out every piece of glass?
When something goes wrong in your business and you underreact, the consequences can be devastating.
Another boss of mine – not the careless one from the zoo – recommended for problems we should “kill an ant with an anvil.” Don’t just solve the problem. Crush it. Obliterate it. Execute a permanent solution.
Let me share an example of executing this concept with an underperforming employee. The quality standards for our IT publication writers were clear, and Ed was languishing below where we needed him.
Instead of picking out the shards of glass from his performance, we hit the reset button on his activities and his approach to assignments. He partnered with Barbara, our editorial director, for an arduous bootcamp-like experience.
The first step in his journey included him spending hours laboring on a first draft that missed the standard by a mile. Instead of attempting to tweak his work, Barbara said, “Throw it out and let’s start over.” She taught Ed how to select the right topic and angle for his article – and how to craft questions to draw out that information from his interview subject.
They began to meet before Ed planned any stories, Barbara testing Ed’s thinking and sharing candid feedback where he was off. Then if Ed didn’t gather pertinent information during the interview, Barbara coached him on what he needed to ask and sent him back to conduct an additional interview.
After many tutorial sessions, frequent editing, work, rework, and gallons of red ink, Ed got to standard. He continued to brainstorm with Barbara to ensure he wouldn’t backslide. He eventually improved so much that when new writers came on board, we sat them next to Ed because he thoroughly knew the best practice process.
Longtime co-workers said from a writing standpoint Ed was a completely new person.
That’s because we rinsed out his sno-kone machine and started over. We didn’t just pick out the glass shards.
