Share Your OMG Story And Win A Leadership Book
by Miki SaxonLast April Steve Tobak, who writes BNET’s The Corner Office, did a post on 5 classic blunders when presenting to the board of directors. Good post, interesting and useful if you’re in that arena.
But his current post, 5 Classic Dumb Executive Moves is priceless; not just the five of his own that he shared, but the dozens shared by readers.
The great thing is that they apply to everyone, so you don’t have to be an executive to learn from them.
Many talked about email sent to the wrong people or the entire company instead of the one person for whom it was meant. (Sound familiar?)
Sadly, many talked about what happened when they gave honest answers to their managers; enough similarities to assure you that Dilbertland is alive and well.
Obviously, it’s a matter of culture and the manager’s MAP, but it’s a good idea not to misread it.
As one person offered in his WORDS TO LIVE BY:
No good deed goes unpunished
Good guys DO finish last
A few were hilarious, here’s a favorite from a woman who was even brave enough to use her own name.
“Gave a speech in a foreign language and, in an attempt to say, “You can be flexible,” accidentally said, “you can stretch your private parts.” The audience loved it and kept asking me to repeat the sentence before I caught on.”
Let’s start our own list, here are 5 of mine.
- Back when smoking was still acceptable in offices I smelled a cigar and made a comment about the phallic implications of men who smoked cigars to my cube-mate. A few minutes later the VP visiting from HQ walked in carrying his cigar. He pretended he didn’t hear, but I was told later that almost everybody heard me.
- When I was a recruiter I called a long-time client and presented an engineer for a critical opening. Half way through I realized I was presenting the person who had just left.
- Probably one of the dumbest things I did as a recruiter was setting up an interview and then forgetting to tell the candidate, so he was a no-show. The manager was furious and I had to grovel to get him to listen to the truth and reschedule.
- During a training session on writing better emails I critiqued one of the real life examples given to me by HR, pointing out the grammatical and spelling errors, poor phrasing and misused words. It turned out that the email was from the executive who hired me.
- Then there are the times, too numerous to count, since my hearing went south that I’ve responded to what I thought was being said and was not only off base, but completely out of the park.
Not my smartest moments.
What about you? What are your most remembered OMG moments?
Each OMG moment you share will enter you in a random drawing for a copy of Jason Jenning’s Hit The Ground Running.
The contest runs through August 31 and you can enter as many times as you want.
Your comments—priceless
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Image credit: annia316 on flickr
August 10th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
While working as a PC tech, I was often backed up and very busy. During one exceptionally stress filled day, working a double on my birthday and backed up beyond belief, my boss called and started going on and on about his weekend, his kids, his new car… you get the point. After several minutes of this, I told him I needed to put him on hold real quick, turned to my coworker and said “Can you please talk to this idiot until he gets to his point and then let me know what he wants?”
Seeing her eyes widen to the point of cartoonishness, I turned around and saw (of course) my boss standing behind me folding his cell phone. He had tried to keep me on the phone so that I’d stay in the back while he brought in a cake and a giftcard for dinner that night, since he was going to cover the second half of shift.
Needless to say… awkward.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Awkard, but hilarious, Eric. I hope you had a good birthday. He sounds like a great boss.
Thanks for sharing!
August 10th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
As you know, non-profits can be the last harbor for the truly creative– and the truly unbalanced. One of our contract workers has a desk in the far side of our conference room. Our board meeting was the next morning, so I went into the conference room to straighten up. A bunch of video tapes were in an unmarked box on the floor next to the shelves where those tapes are usually stored. Right next to the conference table.
I quickly put the tapes back on the shelf and moved the empty boxes to my department.
That afternoon, the woman called me, screaming obscenities and asking me who I thought I was, touching her boxes. I reminded her that I was the director of communications at the office and suggested we have this conversation at another time. She called me back, over and over and over again. She wouldn’t calm down. She even went to scream at my assistant for a while when she couldn’t engage me in the fight.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Hi Christina, what in the world was on those tapes that she got so upset? After those actions I would not be surprised to hear that she was out of a contract as well as some boxes.
Thanks for stopping by; your story proves that it really does take all kinds.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
It was 1 am, 10 below zero in Chicago and I couldn’t sleep. I was stressed about a brochure I had to write for an important client, so I got dressed and drove to the office in the deadly freezing cold. After getting a good start on the brochure, I went down to the bathroom on the first floor… inadvertently leaving my keys on my desk on the 3rd floor. The stairwell door locked behind me so I couldn’t get back up. I had no coat so I couldn’t leave the building. I sat in the stairwell for six hours. Luckily, I had a pen and wrote the entire brochure on a roll of toilet paper by the time my first co-worker showed up 6 hours later.
It was a pretty good brochure, too, though I transcribed it with the shades drawn.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
That story so fits you, Sean. You must have been a mailman in a former life and never forgotten their creed. It must have been high quality toilet paper, too.
Thanks so much for sharing!
August 12th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I was tapped by the head of my department in New York City to fly over to Japan to fill in for a colleague who was returning to the States for three months. I landed on a Sunday night to report to work the coming week.
The American manager who was to be my immediate boss in Tokyo stopped by and told me he would drive me to work for the first couple of days since Tokyo was so confusing to navigate.
On Monday, I was supposed to follow him as we both drove little motorized scooters to work.
The next morning morning, I drove down the block to meet him in the lobby of his apartment building. When he didn’t show on time, I rang the buzzer to his apartment. His wife answered the intercom and said, “I think you’d better come up.”
It turns out Phil* ** had gotten into a scuffle outside a bar the night before and had been thrown in jail by the Japanese police.
My first thought was, “Gee, that’s too bad for Phil.”
My second thought was, “I have absolutely no idea how to get to work. I’m going to have to call New York and tell them I won’t be in the office today … because I can’t find it.”
Numerous phone calls to the Tokyo office finally netted a co-worker who spoke both English and Japanese who was able to relay enough basic language skills for me to direct a taxi to the downtown office building where I spent the rest of the day covering for Phil (“I have no idea what time he’s coming in today…”) and learning the intricacies of the Japanese legal system (“Phil is an important manager and we really can’t afford to have him in jail for 90 days…there must be some way to resolve this…”)
Life in Japan only got zanier after that.
=======
* – his real name
** – not Phil Gerbyshak from Slacker Manager :)
August 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
That is hilarious, Mark. Now I know how you ended up writing/doing comedy.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I don’t have a lot of OMG moments, since I work from home, and had very low-level jobs prior to getting my education. The closest I can come is from high school. I was on the swim team, and we had a traditional midnight meet with all local high schools. The meet lasted til 4 a.m., I went with my teammates to an all-night diner until 6 a.m., and had just enough time to get home, shower, and go to work at 8 a.m. I fell asleep standing at my cash register, and a customer had to wake me up to pay.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Miranda, that definitely qualifies! Thanks for sharing.
August 15th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I was running the Asian branch of our extremely competitive global corporation in Japan. Some hotshot MBA flew over gunning for my job. His name was Jabo, so I figured he was of Japanese ancestry directly descended from the famous haiku poet of the same name.
He didn’t know his way around Tokyo, so I had my wife tell him I was in jail. He never did find the office and ended up flying back in shame on Sepaku Air.
I felt bad (briefly) about ruining his career, but later learned he had become some hotshot, seven-figure humor blogger and wondered if I had gone far enough.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Se…I mean Phil, you are too much!
August 15th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
BTW, there’s a link to this post that you’ll all enjoy. Apparently I chose a pornographic gerbil image and was outed at http://writelarge.com/node/281.
Be sure to see my comment, along with the spam the blogger hasn’t bothered to remove (as of this time).
August 17th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
[…] the Ground Running by Jason Jennings at Leadership Turn (ends […]
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Hi everybody, we have a winner!
There were six entries (I want to thank every one of you) and according to Random.org the lucky winner is…sound of trumpets, roll of drums…
Phil ****!
I’ll be emailing you to get an address.
Again, thank you all for wonderful stories and for making my contest a success!