Giving direction to your employees is something most people struggle with — not the act of giving the direction itself, but trying to decide how much to give and at what point to give it.  Some people give way too much direction.  They stand over you and say, “Okay.  Now do this.  Okay.  Now do that.”  Until you start shining up your resume.  On the other hand there are people who give vague, easily mis-interpreted direction and then wonder why things didn’t go well.

In my career I’ve surrounded myself with people who work well without a lot of direction.  If I’m going to stand right there and tell someone how to do something down to the finest detail, I might as well just do it myself.  My style is to say, “You know, you’ve got to be in San Jose on Friday.  Do you know where San Jose is?  Is there any reason you can’t be there on Friday?  Okay.  I’ll count on you to be there on Friday.”  Then I leave and assume they’ll be there.

I don’t have a problem with the people I work with being there.  If they said they’ll be there, they’ll be there.  If they didn’t know where San Jose was, they’d say so.  If there was some unseen circumstance (unseen by me) that would preclude them from being there, they’d say so.  So when they say, “I’ll be there,” you can go to the bank they will.

I worked with a guy once that drove me crazy.  Maybe you’ve worked for him (or his soul mate) too.  He’d say, “You know, you need to be in San Jose on Friday.  What you do is go out the front door of the building (don’t go out the side door, make sure you go out the front,) then get in your car and turn left out of the parking lot.  Now I know a lot of people turn right out of the parking lot but you’ve got to turn left.  Are you writing this down?  Good.  Then go to the freeway.  Be sure to wear your seat-belt, there are a lot of crazy drivers on the freeway . . . . “  And so on until you go out of your mind.

I guess the question is, how reliable are your employees?  If there’s a problem will they tell you?  Did you hire a bunch of losers who can’t figure out on their own which way to turn out of the parking lot or did you get people who can think for themselves?  A lot of manager don’t like to hire people who can think for themselves.  Usually because they’re not thinkers so they’re intimidated by those who are — easier just to hire losers.

When I tell someone to go to San Jose and be there Friday, I don’t care how they get there.  They can drive, fly, take the train or the bus, ride a horse, walk, hitchhike, I don’t care!!!  All I care is that they’re in San Jose Friday.  I trust they will use good judgement on the best way of getting there.  I guess if they don’t, I could always tell them which way to turn when they leave our parking lot.  Yeah, right.  In the immortal words of Dan Hanna, “If you can’t do, you can’t stay.”  ‘Nough said.