Communication is not optional… If anyone has to ask for a status report, you are failing at your job. I don’t care how good the news is, if you force others to come looking for it, you are failing at your job.
Back in the early 1980s I was working in New York for the Entertainment Channel–the company that through a merger became the “E” half of today’s A&E Network. I was director of sales, and one day my boss, Jim Collins, and the COO, Jack Diller, told me that they wanted to move me into the marketing department. I told them that I was successful and happy where I was. Further, I had no experience in marketing and no desire to move from my cozy 6th Avenue office I shared with my team to corporate headquarters several blocks down the street. I then listed a dozen or so other reasons why I didn’t want the job.
Diller leaned back and roared with laughter. “Augie,” he said, “your reasoning is perfect and your business sense impeccable, and that is exactly why we need you to take this job! We have a crisis in marketing, and we need you to get your arms around it.”
Intentionally aged wide angle photo of a cluttered desk with old monitor. High dynamic range photo.
The next day I walked into my new office only to find a lonely looking desk, bereft of even a phone, completely covered with brown, interoffice envelopes piled 18 inches high. The envelopes were stuffed with interoffice memos that my non-existent predecessor had, of course, never gotten around to reading, let alone sending on. My new desk was apparently the place where memos went to die, and I suddenly felt the same way about my career. For the first time I felt incipient panic. I was way over my head, without a boss, and without an inkling as to where to start.
Extremely depressed, I went to Collins for advice, and after taking one look at me he said, “C’mon let’s go to lunch.”
We went to the US Steak House in the old Time & Life building, and Collins told me to get a legal pad and make a “to do” list of everything great and small that I could think of. Once I had done this, I was to rank them all in order of priority. After that he told me to choose the top ten and put the rest in the drawer.
Top 10 list on legal pad
“Listen Augie,” he said. “Never work on more than ten things at a time. And let me give you another piece of advice,” he added with an Irish twinkle, “the things at the top of your list should have something to do with money.”
I did as he suggested, and it worked like a charm. I quickly began to bring order to the chaos around me, and though my job did not come with a staff, I soon had other people in the department coming to me for direction.
* * *
Some years later I was the new vice president of sales and marketing for a software company. One day the head of creative services came into my office, sat down, and announced that she had a “bone to pick” with me. “I keep sending you suggestions,” she said, “and you never act on them.”
Reaching for my drawer and retrieving my trusty legal pad, I showed her where I had dutifully recorded her suggestions. I then shared with her the ten things I was currently concentrating on.
“Betty,” I said, “you made some great suggestions, but I only work on ten things at a time. If you think any of your suggestions belong on my top ten list I am listening, but if so, which one of the things on my current list would you replace?”
After looking at my list, she agreed that I was working on items that were more critical than any of those she had suggested.
But Betty’s bone picking still taught me an important lesson: The importance of communicating. It was not enough for me to have my list. It was also critically important that everyone impacted by my list was not only privy to my priorities, but also had a way of influencing them.
The fact that Betty had concluded sales and marketing was a black hole where good ideas go to die, was not her fault but mine. Rather than being put out by the fact that I had just been confronted by the head of another department, I was in fact grateful for her temerity. It left me wondering how many others were equally frustrated by my radio silence but were keeping it to themselves. I also learned that when we allow an information vacuum to develop, we allow people–quite naturally–to assume the worst. If we want people to assume the truth, it is up to us to control the flow of information through transparent communication.
Betty’s business lesson is never make people ask. If you force people to come to you, you are failing as a communicator. After that I kept working my legal pad, but I always let everyone contribute to what was being added and informed about what had been accomplished. Later, when I became CEO of my own company, I insisted on preemptive communication. I wore myself out repeating, “Communication is not optional. If anyone has to ask you for a status report, I don’t care how damn good the news is, you are still failing at your job.”
Considering all this, I profusely apologized to Betty for forcing her to come to me. Betty and I soon began cooperating so closely that many in the organization thought we had merged our departments. Best of all, Betty and I have now been friends for over 30 years.
