Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

A post at slowleadership by Matthew Myers talks about business leaders leaving work at noon. The point he's making is if we had less time, we would be disciplined to work on the things that make the greatest impact.

He says: "The reason is simple. If you had less time to work, you would work on only the things that produced the greatest impact. You would work less on the things you enjoy and more on the things you should."

In this post I want to focus on the "things you enjoy" part.

Partaking in a new store startup one time, I remember the one responsible for getting the whole thing ready was at the interviewing stage. When talking to potential hires, she talked about her past experience with potential employees that would tell her how much they enjoyed the specific business they were trying to get a position in.

I always remember her telling them that the idea wasn't to walk around the store enjoying the atmosphere of the products surrounding them, but their job was to move merchandise out of the store i.e. sales.

The past experience was some employees who loved the merchandise would talk about it with customers, while not looking at ways to make add on sales and move the merchandise. It was more of a hangout for them where they could talk up their interests but not focus on sales.

It was a good thing to hear for me at the time, as we always hear that we need to have passion for what we do (and I agree with that), but at the same time we must move merchandise if we want to have a healthy business. To do that we must work on the right things, not only engage in time-wasting conversations with tire kickers or lonely people.

Of course we must be careful here in that we must properly identify and know the difference between the real customers and those just out for a stroll. It doesn't mean we can't be polite or engage them in coversation, as they may be looking for future buys, but it does mean we need to focus on moving product above everything else.

The success and health of our business demands that we never lose sight of this, no matter how much we enjoy the business we're in.