I like sausages.
Luckily for me, the world of work is a continual sausage making machine: each week it spews forth incidents and stories that can be served up as tasty treats for you, the manager, and your team.
Recently we saw (and 10 million Australians felt) the Optus outage incident. Which some are now calling a debacle.
I’m not going to smack Optus or have a crack at their CEO in this post. That’s already been done big time in the mainstream media. I use Optus for my home internet and will be sticking with them. For now, at least. And credit to Kelly Bayer Rosmarin for simply fronting up to the cameras (as she should, of course). That wouldn’t have been easy. Instead, I want to merely highlight that these more notable work-sausage-stories are something you can use to your advantage.
How?
In a couple of ways. Firstly, think about what your personal manager/leader approach would be if your business was the story of the day. Re the particular sausage sizzle that is Optus: among all the hoopla and press conferences, what caught my eye and surprised me was the WAY in which things were communicated. The overly scripted responses. The excessive (and silly) corporate speak and terminology, which is essentially empty talk. The conflicting body language vs. what was being said. If those cameras came knocking at your office door, due to an unexpected major problem at your business, how would you respond? Would you “Be Honest”, my favourite golden rule? Would you speak plainly? Do you feel confident enough to front the cameras? Would you be genuinely sorry for your clients who were impacted? How would we know? And so on.
Secondly, it’s a great 5-minute team discussion. At your next team meeting, you could chat about the Optus sausage. Or any other work-sausage-story that takes your fancy. But don’t only ask your staff what they thought about it (that’s too simple). Ask them what are the learnings (if any) we can take from it, as a team? Do we communicate in the right way with each other, for example? How do we handle mistakes and errors? You get the gist. It’s also a great way to introduce some much-needed variety and spice into those often dull and repetitive team meetings.
Time for some home DIY … I suddenly realised I have to pop out and head to Bunnings tomorrow morning.
