Power in the workplace
After meeting up with a friend this weekend the conversation turned to business, my friend runs a facilities management company and although he has been going only 2 years has 4 blue chip clients he looks after.
His business has just gone through quite a tough expansion phase over the past 6 months and to keep up with the workload and maintain some form of quality he has been taking on more and more staff.
This then left him with the task of either promoting existing people or bring in new management. I remember offering him some on advice on this some months back and we agreed the best way would be to promote people within the business that have been doing well.
My friend being a self confessed crap manager gave this task to somebody else. The problem he has now is the wrong people managing and who think they have more power than Super Man! The result? The good people could not work under this poor manager and have left leaving my friend in a right mess!!!
It goes to show the true meaning of power and promotion!!!! Its like this old story i have heard at many business talks on people management and power:
A young business man was finally promoted, with this promotion came a private office all to himself, finally he had got himself out of the open place office from the rest of the workers, where eagle eyes watched 9 to 5.
On his first day he sat proudly in his chair in his office. Feeling proud and full of power he sat there not doing much work until there was a knock on his door. Eager to impress and present his ‘power’ to the world he shouted “come in” and then quickly picked up his phone and began speaking:
“Yes i appreciate how big this problem is, i totally understand the seriousness of this issue but please don’t worry, i am the right man that can sort all of this out, please don’t worry, leave it with me …”
He then slammed the phone down and said to the man standing at the door “and what can i do for you?”
The man at the door replied
“Nothing, i have just come to connect your phone up …..”