Smart Lemming Diary: Using Candor at Work

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June 1, 2006

Work has been busy and intense. On the Executive Team, we’ve been working big issues, since our last lead investor meeting like sales compensation and reorganization.

With that behind us, the focus is now on the Operations side of the house.Our Executive Team will go from five to four soon, so that’s challenging the bandwidth of our operations.

Our mission critical problem is that we can’t book revenue until our operations side of the house implements our product. Our sales forecast relies on two things, closing the sale and the timing of when we can book the revenue.

In the Hot Seat

At the Executive team level, we agreed the “hot seat” on Operations only reflected our focus of moving down the list of mission critical things to solve. Now that we’ve executed in stabilizing the Sales team, we’re moving onto areas managed by other Executive Team members. We’re having candid discussions amongst the team and between team members to problem solve options.

Next week, our Operations will be under the microscope as we discuss all the mission critical issues. I’m not looking forward to next week’s meetings because things are so serious that our lead investor and Board Chairman is coming back to meet with us to discuss everything.

Teachable Moment

This week, we’ve had to have candid discussions at the Executive level. Since 1998, I’ve learned the hard way that you must exercise the greatest caution in candor. If you don’t, it can come back and bite you. It can potentially be a job killer, if you’re not mindful of what you’re saying. Or worse, it can be a job killer for someone else.

If you find yourself in a situation when your boss asks you about one of your peers, tread carefully. Stop and think before you reply. If you don’t have all the facts, then gracefully decline to answer because you don’t know all the facts. Your words do have power and can’t be taken back. If you do have the facts to the best of your understanding, then try to do the right thing for your company, department, and peer. You’re all in it together.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here. For the first diary entry, click here. For the highlighted Smart Lemming Diary entries, click here.

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