The first chap I reported to after my MBA said this once and we found it terribly funny. His name was Bala Rao, which we changed quickly to Balls, because that seemed to define him better. After a career failure as an accountant, he had been put out to pasture by the company that was compassionate enough to not fire him, but we received his nuggets of wisdom every day.
I shall now compare him with someone else (which comparison, you will agree after reading, is most unfair), quoting a little story from the book How Google Works.
"Sridhar Ramaswamy, one of Google's ad leaders, tells a story of the early days of AdWords, Google's flagship ads product.
Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, had an idea for something he wanted Sridhar's engineering team to implement, but he did not make a compelling argument as to why his idea was the best and Sridhar did not agree with it.
Sergey was the big boss and could have simply ordered Sridhar to comply. Instead, he suggested a compromise. Half of Sridhar's team could work on what Sergey wanted and the other half would follow Sridhar's lead. Sridhar still disagreed, and after much debate about the relative merits of the competing ideas, Sergey's idea was discarded."
Now, books have a tendency to highlight the exception and I hope this wasn't one of those. If the incident is reflective of the person, then - you will agree - it was a remarkable display of modesty by the co-founder.
Three effective lessons from this incident:
Lesson One: Negotiate with an open mind - there's a fair chance that
a) you might be wrong
b) or have incorrect information
c) or have come in to the meeting with a bias or preference ("This is a great idea, it cannot fail." or "This is the only course of action possible now..." or "I am the only one who has the knowledge to take a decision on this")
Three effective lessons from this incident:
Lesson One: Negotiate with an open mind - there's a fair chance that
a) you might be wrong
b) or have incorrect information
c) or have come in to the meeting with a bias or preference ("This is a great idea, it cannot fail." or "This is the only course of action possible now..." or "I am the only one who has the knowledge to take a decision on this")
Lesson Two: Therefore listen, paraphrase the other person's point of view and debate. Acknowledge any point that the other person makes that is right.
Lesson Three: When there are people in your team who disagree with you, that is a strength and reflects positively on them.
And a bonus lesson: When you implement lessons One and Two above, it reflects well on you!
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