Ten Aphorisms to Manage By
Posted by estiator at 7 September, at 09 : 00 AM Print
By CONSTANTINE N. KOLITSAS, Business Coach
Walking on Earth for close to six decades, and spending nearly five in one particular business (from age 11), gives a person what we’ll politely call “perspective.” In my capacity as a business coach and mentor, I’ve grown accustomed to distilling much of that perspective into sets of aphorisms that my staff have come to (hopefully affectionately) refer to as “Dinoisms.” Longtime readers of this column will recognize many of those Dinoisms, and this month, I thought I’d collect my ten favorites and share them here.
You Can’t Say Something Once and Expect Anyone to Remember. One of the reasons why aphorisms have devel-oped through the millennia is that they help people to remember things or, in our case, remind others of things. Science tells us that learning is done through repetition, and, by extension, if you want to get a message through to someone, you need to repeat it, and often in creative ways so that the message reaches them on multiple levels and through multiple channels. The general rule of thumb is that an average person needs to hear something 13 times (yes 13!) before it sinks in.
Management Is the Art of Accomplishing Things with and Through Others. Early on in my career, I took a management course, and this was the first sentence in the first chapter of the textbook that came with the course. And it’s something that I have internalized and expanded upon ever since. Management is not about having the power to give orders, but the ability to get others to do things that need to get done, and to do them right and in an efficient manner. And management is not something that is the exclusive domain of someone in an authoritative position. We all need to manage down, across, and up. By that I mean that, yes, we manage people who are under us in the organizational hierarchy, but we also need to manage those who are at our own levels and even those above us. For example, if I’m tasked with building a catering business as an ancillary component of the restaurant’s operation, then I need to get my co-managers to understand the operational aspects so that no one drops the ball, and I need to get my superior to allocate resources and training time to make sure that the project is a success. And because they’ve got their own shit on their plate (excuse the crude example), they’re not going to just add on because it’s the right thing to do; I need to manage them to get what I need to accomplish my goal.
Trust and Respect Are Earned. It’s the pitfall of a new or inexperienced manager to believe that their job title bestows upon them instant respect, but nothing could be further than the truth. Respect is something we earn through our actions, our ability to communicate, our ability to inspire, and our ability to understand the plight of everyone on our team. The Ottoman “effendiko” model is as sick and old as the empire was in the early 20th century (the Ottoman Empire was actually known as “the Sick Man of Europe”). And the same goes with trust. Understand this: Today, no one is going to trust or respect you until you prove yourself. And if for some reason they do, the moment you do something to betray that trust and respect, you will lose it forever and never get it back.
Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. This one says it all and doesn’t need much in the way of elaboration. Leaving things to fall into place at the last minute is a recipe for disaster. Develop good planning habits and you’ll save so much time, anxiety, and effort that results from scrambling or, worse, from mopping up the mess after the fact.
You Can Have Excuses or You Can Have Success; You Can’t Have Both. There are always excuses when something goes wrong—some very real and some imagined. But the outcome doesn’t change until you embrace the fact that to succeed you need to overcome the obstacles that will become excuses if you fail.
Failure Is Just a Learning Opportunity. Far more brilliant minds have been saying this for centuries: Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable (Coco Chanel); Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly (Robert F. Kennedy); I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work (Thomas A. Edison). One of the greatest political figures of the 20th century, Sir Winston Church-ill, said “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,” and, perhaps because he felt that he failed to communicate his thoughts on the matter, said on another occasion, “Failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Reality Is Not Based on True Fact, but on Perceived Fact. Understand this: You may know something to be true, but if the public perceives something different to what you know to be true, it really doesn’t matter. Their wrong perception is what becomes truth de facto. No, it’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. Just find a way to deal with it and slowly change the narrative.
If it Walks Like a Duck and Talks Like a Duck, It’s a Duck! Don’t read a person or a situation for how you want them/it to be. Look at the signs. They’ll tell you what’s what.
A Liar Is a Liar. Our nature is our nature. If someone lies, it’s because it’s in their nature, and probably because they’re good at it. I always tell my team that I’ll believe anything they tell me, but once I catch them in a lie, going forward I won’t trust a word that comes out of their mouth.
Do Things Right, Do the Right Thing. The best for last: This simple aphorism forms the crux of my life strategy. Do Things Right—I don’t look to cut corners but, rather, I look to do the right thing. If beautiful garden tomatoes will make the best horia-tiki salad, I won’t serve them with anything else. Do the Right Thing—if I’m walking over a piece of paper on the floor, I’m going to stop and pick it up. These are two simple examples, but the principles apply in all manner of situations and in all aspects of life: personal, and professional.
Constantine Kolitsas is the president of CNK Consulting, a restaurant consultant and coaching business. He can be reached at 203-947-6234 or at ckolitsas@gmail.com.
