What Is the Score?

The bully

A while back I watched an internal audit.  I saw an Area Director evaluate his Ops Supervisor.

The results were, how can I best put it? Poor…

Out of a possible 20 audit points the area scored 3.

The boss went ballistic.  He took his subordinate aside and destroyed her.  He told her she needed to fix this, then fix that, then fix the other.  And when she had fixed the other she needed to move onto this and this and this and this.

Then, as a parting shot, he told her she needed to have it done by next month when the “big boss” would come round and audit her again.

I watched the aftermath

She shattered.  As far as she could see, all that lay ahead of her was a month full of stress with another kicking at the end.

If the purpose of the audit was to improve the business it failed.  All it did was cause sleepless nights.

Another way

He could have played it differently. If he had said something like…

We scored 3/20, could you focus on fixing just one thing?  Then when we go through the audit next month we will be better the we are now.

Perhaps then she would have agreed and walked away happy.  The request would have been reasonable. The thing that they agreed needed to be fixed would have been fixed and, most probably, a couple of other things as well.

It isn’t the score that matters, it is what you do with it.

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Image by John Monreal