Friends & Friction: Want to thrive? Follow these steps

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the seat belt sign. If you are doing business in the toilet, pause it right now and run back to your seat.

It will be easier to clean your seat than to try to pull your head out of the toilet.”

If you think the lockdown owing to the Covid-19 coronavirus is a nightmare, then you’d better wake up to the reality that the next few years will be hell.

Disasters give an organisation the opportunity to get rid of dead wood and cull the mediocre limbs that came in through the cracks.

Here is a list of the types of managers who need to be culled from your management team if your business is to thrive in the future:

1. Managers who want detailed plans before they do anything: We live in a time of extreme unpredictability.

The environment is volatile and the competition remains unpredictable.

2. Dunderheads: In a storm, the most dangerous vessel is an empty one. You need depths of knowledge to steady an organisation.

3. The fearful: Even in the best of times, cowards never make decisions.

During turbulence, they make decisions that are based on self-preservation, which can be detrimental to an entire organisation. Mistakes will be made and the organisation must learn fast.

4. The coasters: If someone believes in the mantra that “there is no I in team”, mark them as a target.

Winning teams are made up of ambitious individuals who know how to work together. They will not allow themselves to sink to the level of the weakest individual.

It is the responsibility of the weakest to upgrade themselves to the level of the highest if they want to remain in the team.

5. Those who love order: In tumultuous times, the one who spends time on appearances and how clean their office looks is wasting time on the wrong things.

Turbulence is the time for creativity and risk-taking.

6. The talkers: Many people will give you excuses about why they couldn’t do something, but this is not the time for excuses.

It is time for action. How do you feel when the delivery guys bring you the wrong order? Why then would you tolerate an incompetent manager who does not deliver?

7. The pleasers: The time for sucking up is over. Lovers of hierarchy are the same as people who love order – they are more concerned with looks than in getting down and dirty.

8. The introverts: In a storm, you need relationships for you to survive. You need someone who can make them easily and maintain them just as easily.

You need to be able to build relationships with the toilet cleaner to make sure that toilet paper arrives on time and at the right place.

9. Those who resist diversity: Knowledge is neither the preserve of the select few nor an old boys’ club. Nuggets of wisdom are everywhere.

10. The hoarders: Those who are easily threatened by the success of others will stifle the growth of the organisation.

The turbulent times are here to stay; they will be the new way of life.

11. The “when-wes”: Only a loser looks back in the middle of a race.

In the days to come, those who refer to the trophies that are gathering dust on the shelves will soon bite the dust. Make sure they don’t take the whole organisation to the grave with them.

12. The empire builders: It’s been a lament for ages that business has to do more with less, and that time has finally arrived.

The empire builders are overly protective of their turf; they can quickly turn their wrath against fellow colleagues instead of the competition.

13. The technophobes: Technology is to business what water is to fish. There is no turning away from it.

Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency

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