SCENARIO 1
A decade ago, you took a giant leap of faith, quit your job, took out a small business loan (which, honestly, you couldn't afford), and launched your own business. It was scary but exciting. With failure not an option, you poured in your proverbial blood, sweat, and tears—every available waking hour. Over the ten years that have ensued, you've taken only one vacation, but your commitment to this longshot is beginning to pay off. Your start-up just hit midsize business status, last month reaching the one-hundred-employee mark.
To celebrate, you decided to take a ten-day beach-lounging excursion to Hawaii with your significant other, to whom you promised that you wouldn't check e-mail for the entire duration. For the recent company expansion, you brought on a hot-shot prodigy in your profession named Jasmine from Texas A&M University (whoop) to oversee the operations of the business. While you think highly of Jazz, it took everything you had to relinquish day-to-day control. Before departing, you hand Jazz a priority list with seventeen items you deem essential for her to complete before you return.
She of course agrees and says she's "on it," but not exactly in a confidence-exuding tone. You board your flight on Monday, switching on your e-mail's vacation settings, and prepare to kick back. Tuesday is wonderfully restful. Wednesday features a nice waterfall hike and drinks seaside in the evening. An unplanned Thursday starts out in a beach hammock, flipping pages of a spy novel you bought at the airport...but your mind begins to wander. You find yourself wondering, How is Jazz doing with the tasks I assigned her? Is she running into any hiccups? Might she need my advice on anything?
You sneak a peek at your phone while your significant other is nodding off. Logging into e-mail you see a screen-scrolling litany of unread messages. Clicking over to your company's customer relationship management platform, you find that no progress has been reported on any of the seventeen priorities you tasked to Jasmine. Two of them have yellow blinking caution symbols, which indicate that a customer has reported an error or complaint.
SCENARIO 2
Jump back to the beginning of scenario 1 but tweak the narrative. You're still the sole owner of a start-up into which you've devoted ten years of copious time and personal resources, all at the expense of your family, arduously growing the business to one hundred employees and, at long last, profitability. You've accomplished this by singlehandedly developing a systematic process that just won a J. D. Power award in your industry sector for systems efficiency.
You are so proud of the accomplishment. It has provided for your recent, confident workforce expansion (of course, taking out a substantially larger line of credit to fund). You relied on the process to guide job descriptions, interviews, and hires. The process has even permitted you to finally step back from day-to-day managerial activities and take the trip to the Aloha State that you and your significant other have always dreamed about.
Of course, this wasn't without hiccups. You tried hiring a COO—Steve, who turned out to be a jerk. In addition to ruining numerous previous vacation plans of yours, Steve had to be fired amid much hullabaloo for his complete lack of delivery in performance. That debacle set you back at least two years. So, before nailing down your plans for Hawaii, you made sure to methodically work through the decision to hire Margaret, a Stanford MBA grad with an incredible résumé, impeccable references, and a task-master reputation. With a feeling of relief that Margaret is a 180-degree pivot from Steve, you welcome her to the company, turn over the keys, and smile when she very soothingly and assuredly tells you, "There's nothing to worry about; I'm on top of it."
You sense you are in such a good place that you don't even take your phone on vacation with you. Ten days of bliss and a nice, deep tan ensue. When your plane touches down upon returning, you call Margaret to thank her for accommodating your unplugging and to let her know you look forward to seeing her tomorrow morning.
Margaret doesn't answer. You get her secretary, who can hardly talk straight: "It's a disaster here! Margaret scrapped the process you built! We've been frantically trying to reach you, but you forgot to leave a copy of your itinerary and we didn't know which resort you booked. We started cold-calling all the hotels on Oahu, Maui, Kauai. The seventeen-point priority list...it's like 170 items long now. I think we're going to go bankrupt!"
The line cuts out as your plane stops taxiing. What the #$@&?! The only words of advice you left with Margaret when you departed were follow the process!
SCENARIO 3
Erase the previous two simulations from your mind. Now, conjure up a pressure-packed Fortune 500 environment. You're a midlevel manager at a behemoth, publicly traded company that practices Jack Welchstyle "rank and yank" employment policies. You are overworked. Exhausted. You want more than anything to finish out this quarter and escape to a leisurely two-week New Year's holiday with your family.
It's December 1. Your production numbers are wavering around the lower threshold that your boss typically uses to trim staff and cut budgetary inefficiencies each January. But at no fault of your own, you feel, given recent market declines in your industry. When you get into the office on Monday, you are greeted by a red exclamation-point-tagged e-mail from your boss titled "URGENT." The body of the message merely says, "See attachment." You click it. Up pops a litany of seventeen things that must be finished before the company shuts down at noon on Christmas Eve.
Ugh. How many hours are there between now and then if you work fifteen-hour days and don't take off any weekends? Is it even possible? You crack open the lid of your triple espresso caramel macchiato, close the blinds, lock your door, and prepare to grind. A mere ten minutes into your first report, you hear knock, knock, knock. You ignore it. Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock. Reluctantly, you open the door. Your colleague, Bob, who might also be on the chopping block come January, barges in, plops down on your couch, and proceeds to elaborate (in no short words) on every detail of office drama, his family drama, his girlfriend drama, and especially every imagined slight from your coworker Clare, who, by the way, you are counting on to close one of your biggest yet most failure- teetering projects.
By the time Bob leaves your office, you're almost happy to dive into your boss's task list—cake compared to listening to Bob!
