Читать книгу If You Want It Done Right, You Don't Have to Do It Yourself! - Donna M. Genett - Страница 10

1

Meet Jones and James: So Alike, So Different

John Jones, Jr. and John James, Jr. weren’t typical cousins. They grew up in the same town, on the same street, next door to each other. Their mothers were identical twins and best friends who married John Jones and John James at about the same time. Amazingly, the two men had also grown up as best friends. Even more amazing, the two John Juniors arrived on the same day, in the same hospital, with their mothers sharing a semiprivate room!

Because four Johns in such close proximity created confusion, the cousins were called Jones and James inside the family. In time, everyone else used these nicknames, too.

No one knew if the cousins’ similarities were caused by identical-twin mothers. It didn’t matter; the cousins looked and acted like twins. Before they were in kindergarten, they had discovered the art of deliberately confusing family and friends. In elementary school, they perfected it. In high school, they spent almost all their free time together, took the same classes, played the same sports. They were equally matched as both students and athletes.

The cousins attended the same college and continued to show up in the same classes. They took some flak about it, but anyone who was paying attention could see that they weren’t doing these things out of some kind of dependence. The truth was they genuinely enjoyed the same things and got a kick out of doing them in tandem, so to speak.

After college, they continued the tradition of amazing everyone (at this point, no one was really surprised—just amused and curious) by marrying twin sisters in a double ceremony. They started families at the same time. They took jobs in the same company and mortgages on houses on the same block. What’s more, they both did their jobs well. Everyone was happy. Things were looking good.

And, things were good, too, until Jones and James were both promoted into management. Their offices were on different floors, so they didn’t see much of each other at first, and, for a while, each assumed the other was, as usual, duplicating his own experience. But that was no longer a safe assumption. James began to notice a difference. And it wasn’t a little difference at that. Worse yet, it seemed to be growing!

You see, Jones consistently left home after a healthy breakfast and returned in time for dinner with his family. James’s schedule was nowhere near so regular. In fact, James’s Day-Timer looked like it had been in an explosion. He often skipped breakfast in order to get to the office a little bit earlier. When he got home depended on how many fires he had to put out that day and how deep things were piled in his in-box.

Not only that, Jones still did the things he loved; he played golf, made furniture, read books about the Civil War, took his kids camping. James, on the other hand, had so many things he had to do that he seldom had time for the ones he merely wanted to do.

For his birthday, Jones’s wife gave him a Hawaiian vacation for two. James’s wife was barely speaking to him, a fact that weighed heavily on his heart and mind.

Jones looked good—healthy and fit. Probably all that golf and sunshine. He still ran three or four times a week. When James looked down, he saw a pot belly, and he felt tired more than he liked to admit. The constant energy deficit had James hooked on coffee which he liked to think made him sharp but, in the quantities he was drinking, only made him edgy.

At work, Jones always seemed to be chatting and laughing with the people on his team, and he was involved in several company and community events. He clearly enjoyed mentoring others, giving his time freely. James didn’t have any time to give. Besides, even if he could have found the spare time, he didn’t have any spare energy. More and more, all he wanted was to finish the day and go home and crash.

James heard that Jones’s boss was a happy camp director. He certainly seemed relaxed and cheerful around the troops. Matter of fact, everyone in Jones’s department seemed relaxed and cheerful. No wonder. They were hitting and exceeding targets, cracking jokes, going home on time.

Sadly, James’s department was getting farther and farther behind. They weren’t meeting their goals. James’s boss was worried and vigilant, James’s employees were restless and grumbling, James’s family was, well, restless and grumbling, too.

James hadn’t been feeling too well either. Sometimes his neck hurt or his head ached, and he was beginning to feel hopeless about keeping up with Jones.

It didn’t seem fair. Like his cousin, James had always been a top performer. When he had only himself to worry about on the job, he could do anything he set his mind to. Now that he was a manager, not only did he have to get his own work done, he also had to see that his people got theirs done. The work had to be kept up to company standards, too. If it wasn’t, he had to deal with that. And, it was getting harder to get his people to cooperate. They didn’t seem to know what to do. When they did, it took them too long.

The additional workload of a manager seemed tremendous. He had reports to write and other reports to evaluate. Memos and professional journals to read. Meetings to attend. On top of all this, he had to do administrative things—performance reviews, hiring, firing, and, more times than he liked to think about, disciplining.

James had gotten wind of several complaints, mostly about his never being available, but also some that he lost his temper too easily. But, with his workload such as it was, he had little time to spend out on the floor and he was often so tired and so stressed that he would forget to use tact.

His boss said he should delegate more, yet every time James tried to pass some of his burden along to others, he ended up with more work to do, not less. The job wouldn’t get done right, and it would fall to James to clean up the resulting mess.

James had always believed that, as his dad used to say, If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. But now, he was reconsidering the wisdom of this cowboy-like self-reliance. What happens when you can’t do it all yourself? When the job is so big it requires several, perhaps even many, people?

He had begun to wonder if the money that came with the promotion was worth the price he and his family were paying. Still, he didn’t want to lose the income or the opportunity. He felt paralyzed.

In his car driving home late one night, after again missing dinner with his family because of problems at work, James came to a conclusion. He had to end his paralysis and do something. Something different. Perhaps even something he’d never done before. Perhaps several things.