I attended a hockey game at the Centre Bell last night. This is the home arena for the Montreal Canadiens. You don’t have to know a lot about sports to know they are one of the great sports franchises. They are in the same conversation as the New York Yankees, the Boston Celtics, UCLA Basketball and Notre Dame football. Of course, past history is no guarantee of future returns! These fans are FANS. They cheer for a good hit or good play like most fans. They love their team and are not happy when they lose. In fact, they are not happy when they give up a goal. The opposing team, the NY Islanders, scored first and the crowd started to boo. Tough crowd!

What if it were like that in business? What if your every decision was subject to close scrutiny and the praise or disapproval of your employees? I have news for you, business IS like that. The only difference is your employees don’t do it out loud. They do evaluate your decisions and they do subject you to close scrutiny and they do boo or cheer. They just don’t let you know when they are doing it. They do talk to each other about your actions just as fans in the stands would do. They do give you signs and indications too and the signs are as obvious as the cheers and boos I heard last night.

If productivity is up, turnover is down, morale is up and absenteeism is down; they are cheering. If productivity is down, turnover is up, morale is down and absenteeism is up; they are booing.

Today, when you play this game called business will you hear cheers or boos?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.