It’s very early in the morning. 6:00 a.m., to be precise. I could barely sleep. The situation at the company is unbearable. Five years ago I decided to start my own business. I got a loan, bought computers, tools and other equipment for my workshop. Latest technology, with lots of features promising high levels of productivity never seen before. Also I needed workers. I wanted quality, high-calibre staff, so I recruited employees who studied at the best universities. I’ve also invested heavily in marketing, spent a big deal of time networking, wearing expensive suits and traditional ties to visit potential customers. I can’t complain. I’ve been selling quite a lot.

However, all these investments compromised my situation with banks, which were raising my interests and penalties due to late payments, damaging my credit history, limiting my capability to access to more finance. It’s hard to admit I could hardly make a profit. We have a lot of work. Enough for the next year, but for some reason, some projects needed much more time than estimated, and those that were finished weren’t delivered in time to customers, which delayed incoming cash, and in consequence, failing to pay suppliers and loand in time. Not to mention my own salary.

Of course I always found ways to pay my employees. I even protected them from reality to avoid demotivation and resistance. I tried to be a good leader, attending courses, but keeping them in a bubble, showing undestanding, not yelling at them, paying overtime and giving them some extra time off after finishing complicated projects, is not pushing them to work faster.

I parked the car and saw my workers walking in the workshop. Despite it was very early in the morning, they were smiley, laughing, not worrying at all about the problems of the company.

I didn’t tell them anything. I don’t want to be perceived as a manipulative boss, but if they were good employees, they would show concern and more commitment to their work.

Those bunch of ungrateful workers… I should fire them all! This way they’d learn!

But that would actually help the business? I could replace them, yes, but that would harm more my reputation than helping it, and during the time I find new employees, projects would suffer even more delay, not to mention that I would create an atmosphere of constant tension that probably wouldn’t do any good.

I took a deep breath, got out of the car and headed the building. Once I got in, I told everyone to come to my office. They followed me with shock, surprise and worry in their faces.

I explained what the problem was and that the company was going through some bumps, then I told them I was expecting them to work faster and better, as we needed to finish projects as soon as possible to invoice customers and receive cash to keep the company financially healthy.

One of my workers spoke up and mentioned that with the current workload, it was not possible to work faster without compromising quality. I insisted and mentioned that they were being paid to do their job quick and well.

After an exchange of opinions, the conversation started to heat up despite the efforts to keep my temper. In the end, I couldn’t stand it anymore and shouted:

“If you don’t do as I say, you know where the door is!”

They looked at me in anger, shock and disbelief. After a moment of uncomfortable silence one said, “If asking for the impossible is your policy, I think I’ve got no other choice than informing you that I’ll be leaving the company. Later I’ll hand over my resignation letter with the exact date of my last day”.

He stood up and headed the door. I had completely lost control of the situation and now I would pay the price. I pretended not to be concerned, but deep inside me I hoped that others wouldn’t follow him.

A senior member of the team went after him, calmed him down and made him take a seat. Everyone was staring at me with challenging looks, some with crossed arms. Finally, I apologised for overreacting. They just nodded. Was that a good or a bad sign?

Then the senior member spoke again and said:

“Boss, I understand the whole situation, but the solution here isn’t to ‘work faster and better’, but in an organised way”.

“Could you please elaborate?”, I replied.

“Last year we didn’t have many projects to work on. It was easy to know what the status was just by looking at them. We could finish them in time and in good quality, which made customers more than happy to pay. Word spread that we were very professional and not crazy expensive. That attracted more and more customers”.

“But that is good and I’m happy for that. I know we have more work. I even hired a couple of new skilled colleagues some months ago and bought better equipment. What I don’t understand is why despite having new colleagues, better equipment, more experience, you cannot finish your projects in time as it used to be”.

“That is true, but so is the fact that we have more stress and that is affecting our morale and in consequence, our work. One of us reported not sleeping well at night because of being late with projects, while we are given more and more. The deadlines haven’t changed much, but the volume has increased significantly. My colleagues here they don’t know what to prioritise as most projects are urgent. They hardly have time to check the status or remember when they exactly started to work on one. It could be weeks or months ago. It’s difficult to organise things better with all the workload”.

“Yeah, but I’m paying you all to figure this out”.

Again silence.

“Boss, It’s not my intention to offend you, but first of all the company is yours. Yes, you put the capital, the risk, and you want your returns, however, you cannot just come and say ‘work harder’ and if by magic, we’ll all work harder than ever and finish all the backlog we have. We know what the problem is, but to solve it, we need to think of a strategy”.

“Very nice words, but if we don’t have time to do the work, how are we supposed to waste time on that?”

“And are you just going to stay there and give orders while the problem becomes bigger until it gets completely out of control?”

The rest nodded. Hard to admit, I wasn’t in a good bargaining position. I could fire people to send a message, but that would risk others to leave the company. And let’s be honest, hiring and training new staff would make things worse.

Then it hit me. I needed to change my mindset.

“Ok, fair enough. The first thing we’ll do is to count how many projects we have and know what their status is. Then we’ll set priorities and reorganise the tasks. For now, go back to work. And you”, I said to the senior member, “you’ll help me out figure out a plan. You’re closer to the team than I am and you know better what they struggle with”.

After several hours observing how the team worked and taking notes about the difficulties they were facing, the senior member and I sat down in the office, put together the notes we took, and started coming up with a plan. We used a spreadsheet, where we listed all the active, finished, non started and potential projects to come. We looked at their duration, as it could vary significantly from one to another and which ones presented some problems that could delay them and how to fix them.

The next day, we had another meeting with the team. First, I apologised for my behaviour and pointed out what needed to be finished as soon as possible. Then I asked them to share their thoughts. They hesitated, but soon they gave their opinion, which help adjust our plans for the day.

Since that moment onwards, I followed up on the projects with the senior member every day, updating our spreadsheet and taking corrective action where needed. In the beginning, it was a bit complicated because of the organisational changes, but after some days, we started to see some progress. Smaller projects could be finished and delivered to the customers, which allowed us to bill them and receive payments.

Over time, we focused on improving gradually the way we were being organised. We could work faster and better. Thanks to more cash coming in, we could invest in a project management tool adapted to the business that even helped us to find ways to improve our internal processes.

After some months, the company was financially healthy again. I paid a bonus to the team as a reward for their hard work. We had a dinner in a fine restaurant where I gave a speech to all my employees.

“I can’t be more thankful for your hard work and commitment than I’ve ever been. Thanks to all of you, I could learn a lesson. It’s very easy to give orders and blame others for our own problems, but the blame culture doesn’t work, only continuous improvement and adapting to what the market wants, and that me, as the manager, I’m the first one that has to change his mindset if I want to see change happen. Of course, every company needs a different course of action, depending on its needs, but I’m happy we could find our way. I want to remind you, however, that today we succeeded, but tomorrow we need to be open to constant changes and embrace them if we are to stay competitive.

And now I’d like to give a toast for the people who made it possible! Thanks to all of you! Cheers!”

And they all drank, celebrated, and did silly things that became funny stories that only happen when people are drunk. Nothing to be worried about, fortunately, but they’ll be part of the story and culture of the company to help build a strong team that will last for several years.