My First Lesson

Part 01 – My First Job

Part 02 – My First Easy Job

Part 03 – My First Promotion

Part 04 – My First Failure

Part 05 – My First Lesson

Part 06 – My First Lost Job

If you’re going to manage people, tasks and businesses, you need to be ready to take responsibility for all the mistakes that happen. You can speak to the staff member, you can speak to the person that made the mistake. They can say sorry, it won’t happen again. But it’s your job to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

This can mean changing the duties of the staff member, giving more support or training, providing new technology, processes or systems to help. Or, in some extreme cases, identifying that this person is not the right person for the job and maybe, just maybe you’ll have to let them go.

But that is management. Management is about bossing your friends around and telling them what to do. Management is leading people to be better. Showing them better ways, teaching and inspiring.

A lot of being a manger is reading and giving reports. But managing people is about improving skills. Making people better.

This is what I strive for in all my roles. Whether I am being a father or being a manager at work, I am always trying to make myself better, and in doing that, making other people better. Everyone I work with is encouraged to find news articles, blogs, and any other information source, and share it to everyone. It doesn’t matter if it’s their area of interest, everyone is encouraged to read and update themselves.

And, when people make mistakes, we talk about it and we work out what went wrong, and how we can prevent it from happening again. It’s an open conversation where the staff members are able to make suggestions to make changes to suit themselves.

Everyone is also encouraged to take responsibility for their mistakes and learn from them. There is an avoidance of blame. The least important thing in any situation is who is to blame. The most important, I think, is how we can prevent it from happening again.

And so, we go back to Pizza Hut.