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Imagine that on Friday morning, the owner of the company you work for comes up and invites you into his office. He tells you that you have been given a promotion starting Monday morning. He shows you where your brand-new office will be and of course the money is way more than you could have ever asked for. He tells you to take the rest of the day off and that he will meet you in your office on Monday morning at 9:00 am.
Over the weekend you have a few thoughts about what you want to do, but you know that you can’t really come up with anything solid until after you talk to him on Monday morning. You get to the office around 8:00 am, you get yourself logged in and you feel as though you are mentally prepared for the upcoming meeting. The owner shows up exactly at 9:00 am and takes a seat across from you. You can see that he has a thin manila envelope in his hand, but you don’t want to ask him about it just yet. You enjoy some small talk about the weekend, and then he dives right in. He tells you what his expectations are for the next twelve months and then tells you that he is available for any questions you may have, but for now, he just wanted to give you this envelope as a guide to get you started with his input. He tells you to look it over and get back to him if you have issues with his directions.
He leaves and you don’t want to look like a little kid on Christmas morning, so you wait a few minutes before you rip open the envelope. You slowly count to thirty to give him enough time to either get down the hallway or give him a chance to come back if he forgot something. You take a deep breath and pull out a single sheet of paper. You flip it over and realize that it’s a blank sheet of paper. You pause for a moment wondering if he made a mistake. What do you do? Do you email him, call him, or text him? It feels like this could be your first test. Could he really be telling you that you have no restrictions? Could he really be telling you that he trusts you so much that you can do whatever you want? He told you what he wanted the end results to be. You have worked in the department for many years, you know the people. So now what? It’s Monday morning, your first day on the job and you have a blank page staring back at you.
For some this is a nightmare and for others this is a dream come true. Either way, how do you handle it? Most people who have ever been in charge of anything has spent time complaining about all the restrictions that are put on them. They talk about all the things that prevent them from doing what they want to do. So, what would you do if you had no restrictions and could run your department exactly how you wanted?
Right now, it seems that most of us make decisions based on how our boss or the owner is going to react. If we think they are going to disagree with us, we don’t do it. If we think that we are going to have to explain ourselves, we don’t do it. We go about our daily work lives afraid to make an out of the box decision because we worry that someone above us is going to criticize us. So now we are going to take all of that off the table. Here you are with a blank sheet of paper, what can you do? This is where everything gets tough. All of us need to just stop for a moment and start over. Knowing what I know right now about the business I am in, what would I do if I was hired to do my current job? Where would I start? What would my expectations be? How would I handle the difficult employees that I’m not dealing with right now? What about the people right below me, are they meeting my high expectations? What if the two biggest things holding me back right now are that I know my people so well that I can’t give them criticism and even though I think this is a great idea, I don’t think that my boss will support me, so why even try it? We are in the position we are in because we have great ideas and make great decisions. So why am I gun shy now? I may not be able to do every single idea that I want, but I’m sure I can get away with a few of them. What are two or three ideas that will build me some momentum? What are a few expectations that I can give to some key people that I can easily follow-up on to help create an environment of expectations? Do I have some bad behaviors that I can address that will quicky turn some things around? I may not have a completely blank sheet of paper in front of me, but I also don’t have a sheet full of laws and restrictions like I think I do. Let’s stop acting like we are being completely held down and start taking some action. Get back to the basics and start making good decisions. Hold people accountable and give people expectations. This is a perfect time to make some changes and get everyone ready for the new year in a few months. Let’s set ourselves up for a huge year in 2024!