Wear Clean Underwear

Why the Time Is Right for Thinking like Mom We all remember familiar sayings and lessons from our mothers: "I don't care who made this mess, just clean it up!" "Eat your vegetables, or you don't get dessert." "Wear clean underwear; what if you get into an accident and somebody sees it?" Hearing them again, we may smile--or perhaps grimace--when we catch ourselves saying them to our own children. But we rarely imagine these sayings could apply to us as adults, particularly in a business setting. But lessons from mothers offer a unique and memorable response to finding new ways to understand business as we approach the twenty-first century. In a time of great change, Mom's timeless wisdom, her fundamental values, are not only desperately needed, but are also enormously effective, in business life today. Moms everywhere have developed an almost universal language to achieve their goals and instill common values. Virtually everyone's mother at one time or another said, "Clean your plate, children are starving in China"--or whatever country happened to be in the news. Think about all the lessons in that one little line: don't waste your resources, realize that you are more fortunate than others, empathize with those who have less. Mom could teach you a lot just while getting you to eat your green beans. Mom still has a lot to teach us, even how to help us run our businesses. Who Can I Turn To? Many years ago, I found myself sitting on a stool in a friend's kitchen, perplexed. I had been in charge of a staff for about a year: making the decisions, enforcing the rules, setting the tone. I was in my twenties, a young woman in a job usually held by a man, trying to prove myself. It had been a rough year. When I had started the job, I had found an office in disarray. People showed up and departed at any hour; work was sloppy; the financial picture was gloomy. For the first two weeks after my arrival, whenever I'd make a suggestion for an improvement, I'd get the reply "That's not how we do it around here." Well, I quickly had enough of that. I called a staff meeting and laid down the law: "The way I want it done is the way we do it around here. No ifs, ands, or buts. This is not a democracy." Shortly thereafter, my secretary quit. Playing the tough guy, however, didn't feel natural or right to me. I just wasn't that kind of person. And this "my way or the highway" mentality meant I ended up spending my time enforcing rules instead of getting the staff to do a great job. So after a while I softened up, shifted in the other direction. I not only stopped telling employees how to do their tasks, I also hesitated to tell them what to do. Instead, I became friends with staff members, socializing outside the office, sharing personal problems and intimacies while at work. We became more like a club, a bunch of friends getting together. The workplace was enjoyable, but a lot of time was wasted. One day, a staff member (with whom I went to dance class every week and swapped stories about dating and boyfriends) came and told me she was going to take her vacation at our busiest time of the year. Yikes! We couldn't afford to be shorthanded just then; I told her I wouldn't approve her vacation request. She was stunned and hurt by both the interference and the rejection. After all, she'd come to think of me as a friend, not a boss. What right did I have to disrupt her vacation plans? Shortly thereafter, she quit too. I wasn't doing too well at this boss thing. That's how I ended up in my friend's kitchen that December. I was seeking his advice on how to be a manager. "How do you manage people so you have authority and respect without being a policeman? How do you motivate people to want to do the work and do a good job, not just make them afraid? How doAbrams, Rhonda is the author of 'Wear Clean Underwear' with ISBN 9780440509073 and ISBN 0440509076.