This is not a story of striving for perfection. Perfection is a noble goal, however, things do get in the way. For the long term entropy is a bit of problem. For the shorter term there are flaws and faults in everything and in all of us. Mistakes are made, accidents happen, and in fact, problems themselves are a sign of life. The positive side of mistakes and wrong turns is learning wisdom and finding new ways to overcome old problems with better solutions — sometimes even by accident.
This is, however, a story I am sure we all have dealt with at some point in our lives. It is a story of the figurative turd in the corner that we make all kinds of justifications around to keep it there because we would lose too much time, money, or online abilities to get rid of it. It could be something about a product or service we are providing yet most of the time it is about a personnel problem.
Imagine a business, no matter how small or large, where someone on board seems to be providing work product in volumes others are not matching, or perhaps they have technical skills that seem to be well above everyone else around them, or more simply they seem have so much institutional knowledge that you are just afraid of even the thought of how to close the gaps when they are gone. Yet, while they are on deck you get complaints from staff and more troubling — complaints from clients. They are rude with their judgements, they do not share or teach, and if you were totally honest with assessment what they do is never completely polished in the end and always needs help bringing it to the state of ‘perfection’ that they claimed to deliver it in. Bottom line is they don’t play well with others.
Yes, these people have been called ‘a cancer’ for an organization but as unpolitical as it might seem a turd might be more appropriate for as someone who had nearly the same saying I had (that titles this story) went on to describe it like:
If there was a turd in your car no matter how many air fresheners you may try to hang on the window you are still going to know it is there.
Unlike a cancer — it is not going to change other people into doing the same, yet it will still make a lot of people unhappy. It probably will not kill the business, yet it will stop it from becoming either more successful or reaching its full potential. It might be located within your own ecosystem, yet others will know it is there without the need for specialized diagnostic tools.
The good news is when you wrap it in paper, throw it out, and clean the surface of the things it was in direct contact with the stink only stays around for a very short period of time. You will find that the volume of work it was churning out was more quantity than quality You will find that the technical skills it had and knowledge it hoarded was worth far less than people working together to find solutions and teach others how to do the same. Amazingly you will be surprised as to how many will thank you for getting rid of the source of the smell from both inside and outside the walls of your organization. As much as you might be relieved in finally making the decision you will also be a little embarrassed that it took you so long.
In summary, don’t fall into the reality distortion fields that these B or C players use to make them seem like A players. Yes, A players can, during brief glances of frustration, exhibit some of the same traits of the piles of poo but the key difference is they will either drag the organization higher or leave it to find higher ground somewhere else. Their reality distortion fields are the vision of where you need to be going and everything they do is attempt to bring people and systems around them to make that happen.
“Real men don’t dance to other people’s tune, instead, they play for others to dance.”― Michael Bassey Johnson
(Originally posted on Medium)