Yesterday morning we began a project to change the molding on some of the glass doors that are on display in the store.
Obviously, the first step in completing any project is to find all of the parts needed to complete the project. After spending 30 minutes looking through boxes in the ‘normal’ hiding places, we wondered whether the parts had been received.
The assistant department manager said YES, they have been here for over a week. Armed with the tracking number, I visited the receiving manager who looked at the same data and concluded the parts were still in-route. So we disbanded the project and went onto the next one.
Late in the day, the department manager showed me where the parts have been for at least 1-1/2 weeks.
This brings up what I consider management principle number one for this company. “If you plan for something 4 hours in the future, that’s strategic.”
In fact, I commented to one of the managers today his reasoning process did not fit within the corporate edits as he was considering things more than two weeks in the future. Later he commented on the same task, but something which could be completed that day.
My comment was that “he was now thinking like a C-level manager for the company” as he was only thinking of today – without any consideration of how the plan pans out over the next several weeks or months.
Isn’t this like our politicians? They have a governmental system which was designed after analyzing the problems within various societies over the past 5000 years. It’s that unique yet that wonderful.
Yet our elected leaders pass trillion dollar bills without any regard on how it affects the average person or family, how the money will be accumulated for these new projects, whether the money will need to be borrowed to just start the project or the inflald leader? If you are a retail manager…tion and debt ramifications to the country.
And I thought when I clocked out at the end of the day I could leave the ‘C-level manager’ manager thinking behind me.
Now I realize our elected representatives and senators have no more mental capacity to think strategically than the retail department managers I work with on a daily basis.
