I Am Not Bill, My Name is Lisa

I am not Bill. Bill is my husband and I love him dearly but I am not him. So, why when I take the car in for over $1,000 of repairs and pay with it with my credit card does the repair shop send the "thank you" coupons addressed to Bill? Why, when I order my personal one-year business subscription to Harvard Business Review (special deal just for you!) and send the reply card out from my office, does the "thank you," come addressed to Bill? Why oh why? 

Just a Little Venting

I spent the first few hours of my first day back from vacation basically filling in "the rest of the story" on actions that had occurred prior to and during my absence. This was very distressing to me. First off, if you don’t get anything else of value from what I have to offer you the one thing you will always get is a balanced, complete, no holds barred accounting of what occurred in any given action. I don’t hide behind metamessges sent but not received or partial facts and really, I don’t set out to paint the rosy picture for myself. If I screwed up or missed something, I will be the first to tell you. The second distressing thing for me was the backdrop of blame. Forget about the benefit of hindsight or the fact that what we as an organization know now and what we knew 90 days ago is very different from both the operating and strategic perspectives. Yes, things change and it is not anyone’s fault.

It is easy to be collaborative when the sun is shining, the daisies are blooming and the birds are singing but true colors really come through when the forecast is anything but blue skies. Blue skies are the exception and the daisies lose their petals. It’s a fact of life. If this is how the game is played, shame on me for my naiveté because I never considered this a game. I still don’t. And, I am not playing. Collaborate? Jointly address problems? I am not falling for that one so easily again.