Disconnection

Hi everybody!

How is your week going? I'm back to keep on seizing the opportunities that everyday is giving us. And to be honest, this has been a very interesting week.

Let's focus on the decisions made by our beloved president Trump, related to the entry of foreigners to the US. If by chance you are not aware, this gentleman had the nice idea to restrict the entry of people from certain nationalities early this week. The only reason given, that they are coming from muslim countries. And all of us already know that muslims are evil. Big evil.

Well, the rest of the planet does not seem to agree with that premise of "Mr President" and... to be honest, I'm not really sure that anyone else than himself thinks like that. One of the consequences of this decision was that General Attorney of the US recommended to legally confront this executive order. Of course she was fired the next day. But the reality is that not only her, but a lot of judges, several really massive companies (Microsoft, Amazon, Google,...), the government of many countries and even some voices from the EU have referred to this decision with some not favorable words. At the end, seems that nobody liked this. Nowhere on the planet. Almost nobody. Well, maybe some 60 million voters did like it. But everybody else, in the planet, didn't.

I believe that we have here an excellent example of disconnection between the head and the body. I've always written these pieces thinking about you, who are reading this, as a team leader. Maybe at your job, maybe at home or, if none of the last, definitely you are at command on your life. So, I would like you to put on Mr President Trump's shoes for a minute. I know, it's not nice what I'm asking for. But do it, please.

This gentleman thinks that he is doing right. Let's be honest, nobody takes a decision thinking that it's the wrong one. But very few people around him shares his vision. This is something very usual. I'm sure that you didn't need to go through the disgusting experience to be in Mr Trump's shoes to know that. Many times we take decisions that nobody really understands. Even more, sometimes not even us understand them once revised looking back from a more or less close future. And even then, they seemed to be the right ones when we took them. What is happening there? I believe that I have the answer.

First of all, every each one of us is convinced that 90% of time we are infallible. Some people even think that they've never in their lives have been wrong. But that´s not true, each one of us makes mistakes. Every day and almost at any time. The problem is that we don't realize and, when we do, not always have the humility to recognize it. And we take the way to go further on the mistake, by pride only. Well, when our position is the leadership on a team, a process or, even as in Mr Trump's position, on the planet, that's dangerous.

This week something happened to me. Turns out that more or less a month ago I took my wife's car to service. It had had an electrical failure and, considering that the first service date was pretty close, I decided to ask for it to be made too. The failure was due to the battery and, despite the car has less than a year, I was told that it was not warranty covered. After a few phone calls made by my wife (she works on that industry) we solved it. I had made quite a lot of phone calls myself, but my results were very different. That made me think that there was no other chance that to pay for the battery. But luckily, my wife proved me wrong. This is the first example of what I'm saying. I had already made my mind to pay for the reparation, based on my information, from three different sources. On the other hand, she had some extra information and, using it, she could make me change my decision.

But I was telling you that this was something that happened this week. A few days after the car left the dealer store it begun to remind me to take it back there. So I checked the service book and it had no registry of the service. Then, I phoned the dealers and they, very kindly, recognized that it had been only a mistake and, of course, the service had already been made. So I stood happy until this monday. Turns out that when starting the car in the morning it tells me that needs some refrigerant refilling. That's bad for a car just leaving a service appointment. So I refilled it and headed to the dealer, where once again very kindly, they extended the mistake from the lack of registry to an underperformed service. Turns out that the refrigerant cap had been wrong closed and the liquid was lost by there. They apologized a thousand times and solved the problem. Well, at least I hope so.

The truth is that I was not happy with the whole episode, so I complained to the CEO and the Service Director of this group. I got their mails from some people within the organization, people that was equally unhappy with the way the business was being managed.

As a consequence the Service Director phoned me immediately. He introduced himself by saying that he had just joined the group, the person before him had just left the organization and he was there to try and solve the situation. He listened to my whole story and thanked me specially for, and I quote: "this is very important data because sometimes we do not even get what is really happening".

And here is another example of what we are talking about. The former Service Director was doing, I'm sure, what he believed to be the best for the group. But, on the way, he damaged the brand prestige and he was impacting to different departments. Our decision, as an example, based on this experience was not to buy any other vehicle from this brand again. His criteria was inadequate or, at least, somewhere on the road he had lost touch with the outcomes of his decisions. As a result, he was fired.

On the other hand, a new person joins and, although he has all the drive to make the situation right, he may fail by misinformation. As it was my case, he has only a part of the whole story and he takes his decisions based on what he knows.

Both are examples of disconnection between the head and the team. Whether it is by lack of information or lack of humility when recognizing the limitations we all have, we finally take wrong decisions. The result, usually, is that the team turns against the head. It happened with the US and the rest of the planet. And also happened in this automotive group.

A little piece of advice. If you are in a position with decision possibilities and leadership, try to keep in touch with your team in a direct, opened and humble way. They are the ones executing your decisions. They are the ones who know, by first hand, the impacts that your decisions have in the real world. They receive the opinions of those around you. If you get to create a confidence and openness environment, you will get this information and your decisions will be better founded. You will still be able to decide to ban muslims to enter your country, but while doing it, you'll know that you are attacking the whole humanity.

I leave you. I'll be back soon with some new thoughts.