WHAT APPEARS TO BE
“SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!” Remember those famous words from Gomer Pyle, the gas station attendant on The Andy Griffith Show? They cracked us up on the sit-com… but they’re not funny during business meetings.
Doing business today is like juggling 101 tennis balls – with one hand behind your back. When you throw a ball in the air you expect a ball to fall back into your hand, not an anvil.
What are you doing to eliminate the surprises in your office?
WHAT MIGHT BE
Here’s what most of your competition is doing: they’re TELLING others what to do (they think this is delegation), and then they’re “holding them accountable” by asking interrogating questions later.
- Did you get it done?
- What did it cost?
- Why didn’t you do it faster?
- (And the killer…) What went wrong?
Shockingly, these people are caught off guard when poor results surface. And SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE! They’ve got a “Gomer Pyle Moment”.
WHAT CAN BE
Gomer Pyle was a sweet man, but executing and delivering results is no laughing matter.
Here are the keys to eliminating Gomer Pyle Moments:
- Be clear about the objective and why it’s important. (It’s best when this is co-created.)
- Ask the execution questions up front instead of at the end.
- What does success look like to you?
- What will be the key to efficiency?
- How will you allocate time for this on your to-do list?
- What benchmarks will you use to measure progress?
We can better predict the future when we eliminate the Gomer Pyle Moments in advance, so we’re not surprised, surprised, surprised later.
What is the difference between what “might be” and what “can be”? You decide.
