Chapter Two of “The Champion Way™”

By Champion in : Chapter Two, The Champion Way™ // Apr 28 2010

I found a solution – I have a solution.

I googled “I have a solution” and found uses for it, but did not find uses for “I found a solution”

Has this happened to you? You are the manager of a group and are working in your office. You can hear two sets of footsteps coming down the hallway in a hurried fashion. You sense that someone is coming to see you urgently. Conrad and Sarah walk in and you immediately recognize that they have something to tell you that they would rather not have to say. Your adrenaline immediately rises as you recognize you are going to have what Steve Farber refers to as an OSM.

There is some hesitation. The hesitation feels like it is taking a long time while we know it is only split seconds. Sarah says that a problem has arisen at the Rocky Mountain Shopping Center. She reminded me of a particular improvement that was made to one of the tenant’s premises. I remembered that particular installation. About a month previously I had been doing an advocacy walk through that shopping center saying hello to each of the tenants and thanking each of them for being part of the Champion family, and noticed an installation that just seemed to be larger than the tenant really needed. I didn’t think much more about it, but it was something that was on my mind.

Sarah and Conrad explained to me that there was a problem with the contractor and the contractor was now claiming from the tenant the sum of $4,100 and the tenant was refusing to pay because while the Tenant needed that type of installation, he later found he received a larger one than he required or that was called out in the lease. He was happy to have it, but was not willing to pay for anything more than what he had asked to be installed.

I had no intention of writing a check for $4,100 in this circumstance. It never should have occurred, but evidently there was a reason it occurred. Now all of maybe 60or 90 seconds had gone by, but already my blood pressure (and theirs) was high. It was explained to me that while the contractor should have thought it through, so should we. On that basis, two senior members of my team felt it was the “right thing to do” to pay some or all of the cost.

Much larger issues were at that time looming for my day. I had to organize and restructure an entire set of proforma documents on our largest project for submission to a lender and at the same time provide a full overview of that project to an interim lender for bridge financing.

I asked them what they think we should do. I was told they believed we should pay the entire $4,100, but believed that the contractor would be comfortable if we at least contributed ½. I authorized the check for $2,050.

Has that ever happened to you? Of course the answer is yes. Now let us play the record back and see if it could have happened differently. I was in my office in exactly the same way and two people far more comfortable with the situation walked into my office and said “I found a solution”. More calmly I would say, “to what”. Their response was, “Well, we have a little problem over at the Rocky Mountain Shopping Center where we could have done a better job telling the contractor what was needed. It is a $4,100 problem and I want to know whether or not we can contribute $2.050 to solve the problem. We know that the contractor has done many favors for us. One of our people just didn’t give them the exact information they needed. By doing this we will get great goodwill with both the contractor and the tenant and our team will have learned a lesson.” With that scenario it will be over.

What a difference and everybody’s blood pressure would have stayed normal for the entire day. The check also would have been written in a heartbeat.

What I want to do is come up with 5 or 6 or 8 different stories which I will do as they come to my mind. They are going to be real stories and I am going to have to tell everbody that once this gets published, that I am using real stories for a lessons Learned issue as opposed to trying to a year later tell somebody that they did something wrong. But after we tell these stories I then want to go into the theory.

Theory – Background – Explanation

One of the principles of The Champion Way™, spoken internally revolves around every single team member acting as an owner and having the right to seek forgiveness. Mistakes will be made and they will be made daily. Obviously the goal is to learn from those mistakes and not make them again. If you run a company where you recognize mistakes are going to be made and people can come forward with their heads held up high and say a mistake was made, what is the best way for them to work that through so that it is best for them personally, best for the company and best for the manager to whom they need to report?

Well, I think I found a solution. We all want our teams to come forward with the solution. In our case we have many tools that help them come up with solutions, must of which arise from Strategic Coach™ materials. The best way of being sure that everyone comes to the table whenever possible is to simply ask them as they come in the door to say, “I found a solution”. On that basis they will have been better served by finding the solution themselves and the manager will have one less of those daily important necessary, but dreaded moments.