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You've Got to Trust Your Peeps
WryteStuff
You've got to trust your people. That's how the saying goes.
Years ago, when I was working for a Fortune 200 company as their national technical trainer and tech manager, I would come home each evening and tell my boys stories from my day at work. Their favorite stories were typically stories about stupid things I'd see others do, or stupid decisions that Corporate handed down for us peeons to do. Oh, the injustice! Those kinds of things make for great stories.
A long-running story was about the critically impaired software that someone at Corporate spent $30 million on to make the service centers ready for Y2K. In short, the software was painfully slow, couldn't track simple things like which technicians worked on each repair, and it would randomly just lose data, often when a customer was standing in front of you asking when their broken device was going to be repaired. The new software not only cost a lot to develop and deploy, but it was estimated to cost the company $500,000 a month in lost productivity and lost revenue due to upset customers. This software was not just a favorite thing to complain about around my dinner table, but it was the bane of nearly every one of the 50,000 people employed by this company.
What is most memorable for me, however (and thanks for sticking with me until I get to the point) is one day while at a training in Chicago where I got to have dinner with the regional service managers. This was just a casual dinner and these corporate big-wigs were talking more candidly than I had ever heard them talk before. This particular day this software had lost the entire day's worth of data. When I got to the restaurant, at the end of the day after a long flight to Chicago, one of the regional managers said to me, "You know all those repairs your techs did today? Huh uh." The data on all those repairs had been erased. It was as if the repairs hadn't been completed, and the next day would be spent by these technicians re-creating the data instead of fixing more items.
While eating at this restaurant, one of the other managers told the story of how this software came into existence. One of the vice presidents of the company hired a friend to head up the program. This friend said he had all the answers for what the company needed, and he was trusted. He said this guy had already been fired, but he wished he could be hired back so that he could be fired again! The regional manager then said, "What are you going to do, you've got to trust your people."
Ok, so I've taken a long time to get to the point. Sorry. This simple statement resonated with me. Executives in the highest echelon of management were willing to risk their reputations and huge sums of money with the only defense being, "You've got to trust your people." This gave me a lot to think about. Of course I told my kids this story.
Over the years I've come to recognize the advice contained in this punchline as vital as a parent of teen-agers. My boys eventually renamed it "You've got to trust your peeps" but it means the same thing. If you have your people, you've got to trust them.
I've put this in practice with my boys as they got older. I've given them things that could be misused for bad. (Any Internet-connected computer qualifies.) I've sent them to far-away places, knowing that they were going to face all sorts of temptations. The thing is, they are 'my peeps.' They understand me and their mother, and we, for the most part, understand them. We have a level of trust between us. If they falter or all-out fail in their endeavors, we'll be sympathetic and we'll offer them help to recover, but we won't feel bad about trusting them. They are our peeps. We have to trust our peeps.
I was reminded of this recently when one of my sons told me that he had consoled a friend who had been mistreated by his supposed girlfriend. He ended up telling his friend that he shouldn't be embarrassed that he had trusted this girl because 'he has to trust his peeps.' I was very proud that I had given my son advice years earlier that he was able to use as advice as a young adult.
Do you carry guilt because you trusted someone close to you who later proved to be unworthy of your trust? You really shouldn't. It's not your fault. You've got to trust your peeps.
Article submitted Monday, May 16, 2011 & read 3792 times.
Bruce Horst loves all his jobs, working with incredibly talented people.
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