Last week I was reading quick news tidbit about how Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, boogied down to Kentucky to work shoulder to shoulder with his hourly distribution center employees. No cameras, no PR, just good ol’ manual labor. We need to see more of this! Whether you’re an executive at a small or large company, you will lead better if you get down into the trenches.
I have always preached and practiced that you can’t lead if you have no dirt under your nails! Here’s why:
HR, as a profession, is on its way out. Those who claim to be “good old school HR professionals,” should start looking for a new career or drastically change their thinking. In contrast, Human Capital professionals who “get it” are on the rise. Companies are no longer willing to pay for simple paper pushers or resume screeners in HR – they want results.
As someone who is very technical, but also a business person to the core, I have had to straddle the two worlds of IT and business my entire career. I have to admit, us technical people, well… we can be cocky, snotty, and righteous, and us business people, well we can be demanding, impatient, inflexible, and righteous as well.
So how can we keep these cats and dogs happy with each other?
So, while reading his “wake up call of a book” for entrepreneurs, I came across a great sentence: ”The purpose of cash cows is to fund new calves”. Yes! Another kick in the behind to liberate an article from my draft folder!
Let us begin! I would like to expand the idea to: “Cash cows inevitably die, and the ones without healthy offspring take the farm down with them.”
Some executives not only dump all their resources on “cash cows”, but also segregate them and poach resources from other units. To justify their actions they use absurd levels of “analysis paralysis” level formulas and theories lacking logic. These actions deprive their organization of larger AND long-term success. What a bunch of shortsighted baloney!
Here are my quick thoughts on how to help organizations increase their ability to succeed short and long-term
Apolinaras is a business operations leader with 12-year track record of helping companies manage growth, build diverse teams, harness technology, and get a lot more profitable.