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Business Rule #40:
Work Smarter, Not Harder
November 24, 2005
(PAGE 2 of 2)
The act of spelling out what you want in words helps you obtain it. Like magic, articulating your targeted aim forces you to focus your thinking. If either team had asked themselves what tools they needed to get the most phone calls, they would have forgotten all about bullhorns and instead bought a cell phone for each of their street staff. With immediate, free access to a phone, what consumer wouldn’t want to request a free fragrance sample?
Excel won by a narrow margin and Capital Edge got called into the boardroom. Even though Alla was the PM and led her team’s failing effort, Donald Trump gave her a pass. Admittedly, she did personally drive her team’s sales efforts when it got to the streets—but she was also the one ultimately accountable for poor planning and budgeting.
In the contest between Adam and Felisha Mason, Adam attacked Felisha’s performance for not hiring more individuals to take their message to the streets. He also complained about the quality of the people Felisha hired.
Since Adam was responsible for blowing a majority of the budget on the contract with the carriage company and leaving precious little money for Felisha’s efforts, he displayed a lot of guts and inexperience by making that argument. Blaming someone like that when you’re the responsible party is something you would expect to hear from a four year old. Adam was like the man arrested for murdering his parents, who pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.
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It didn’t help that, when Donald Trump asked Adam why he should get to stay over Felisha, Adam said he was curious and compared himself to a “sponge” absorbing new information. When you’re fresh out of school, there isn’t much you can say to recommend yourself, except that you’re a fast learner. But in business, if you want to earn the big bucks, your resume better show some real world experience and demonstrable skills. Of course Adam can learn, and he doubtless will. But if he’s treating the workplace as a classroom, he’s more suitable for an entry level position that a place in management.
To her credit, Felisha stood up to her teammates during the task, letting them know that she couldn’t hire the staff they needed, with only $2,000 of their $10,000 budget. She knew they were making a mistake and called it to their attention. No matter. Adam and Alla stood behind their decision to wrap the carriages and prevented Felisha from doing her assignment more effectively. In the end, it cost them the task. If anyone had to go, it should have been Adam or Alla—and this week, Donald zeroed in on Adam for firing.
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Articulating your targeted aim forces
