Let’s Talk Business by Don Jones

Author:Don Jones [Don Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: leanpub.com
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Highest Paid Person in the Organization (HiPPO) sometimes makes non-transparent political decisions. Not because he/she wants to but because that’s way top deals are set up. These “golf course” deals can be frustrating for the people doing the research/execution because they often don’t align with the direct need of the organization/customer.

The example he gave was something along the lines of he and his team spending a great deal of time testing a new piece of equipment for their company. The equipment was a multimillion-dollar investment, and the company was considering two different brands. The brand my friend was working on seemed to be the best fit, and they’d put in a serious amount of work testing it, getting it configured for their environment, and so on.

The announcement then came down that the company had decided to go with the other brand. Frustrating! In speaking to his boss, my friend mentioned how disappointing it was. The brand they’d been working with, he said, was clearly a better fit, and they’d put so much effort into it that was now wasted.

“Oh, it’s not wasted,” his boss told him. “On the contrary. The brand we decided to go with is well aware of the favor we’re doing for them, and they’re going to be taking us into several of their largest customers. We’re going to double our revenue on that deal. So if their equipment is a little bit less perfect of a fit, whatever. We’re getting a great deal in the end.”

“Perhaps,” my friend told me, “the lesson here was that corporate politics are part of the game. And we shouldn’t blame our bosses for just playing.”

It’s true. It’s not personal, and sometimes you just don’t have all the details because there’s no way for you to have them.

I have a friend who worked for a long time at a themed restaurant. The restaurant’s theme was “Colonial America.” Basically, the servers wore knee-length pants with white hose underneath, tricorn hats, the whole deal. The menu was “Americana Comfort Food,” with dishes more or less based on traditional Thanksgiving dinners. Hosts would cry, “Hear ye, hear ye!” when calling a family up for their reservation – that kind of thing.

My friend enjoyed adding a little “extra” for his guests when he could. Servers are, after all, paid mostly in tips, and he didn’t mind working for his. He’d sprinkle some red, white, and blue glitter-confetti on the table for birthdays, amuse children by piecing together drinking straws into three-foot-long super-straws, and so on. The thing is, his manager didn’t care much for the antics. They got into so many arguments over it that my friend eventually left that restaurant (he wound up at a better one, so it ended well).

I wasn’t there for any of this, so I’ve no skin in the game. However, I do know that my friend took the decision to “stop doing the confetti and stuff, it’s off-theme” pretty personally. I understand that it’s not like the guests

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