Bosses, It's Time to Get Tough

Tough times call for harsh tough bosses. I am for ever grateful to David X for showing me what it takes to be a tough leader. Here are his six principles of leading in tough times:

1. Stay in control. On no account let anyone do anything or spend anything without your approval. Make them get permission each time they want to waste money on the photocopier. If you let them think you trust them, they will only take advantage.
2. Delegate. Delegation is very trendy and dangerous. But it is fine if you only delegate the routine rubbish, filing and tea-making. If a project is going seriously wrong you can delegate that, and the inevitable blame, easily. Never delegate meaningful work: as the boss you have to take on all the most interesting challenges. If you let the team do the more challenging work, they may put you out of a job.
3. Pick good team players. A good team player does exactly what you tell them to do. If there is a setback, they will take responsibility for the failure. Demanding staff (bonuses, promotion) are selfish. Disloyalty is unforgivable.
4. Coach the team. Like delegation, coaching is also trendy and dangerous. So make sure you coach the team well. Whenever they make a mistake, make sure they never want to repeat such a mistake: be clear about your criticism and make it very public so that everyone else can learn from their folly. Some witty sarcasm and cynicism will deter people from further error.
5. Give direction. If your team is any good, they should understand intuitively what you want without you having to spell it out for them. And in tough times they should understand that your priorities and direction will have to change frequently. If they can not live with that, they really lack flexibility or team spirit.
6. Monitor progress. Make the team document and update everything on a daily basis: risk logs, issue logs, progress logs, activity logs, meeting logs, master logs and the log log. Review the logs. If there are any variations versus plan (which may have changed, see above) then give them plenty of coaching (see above).

• Trusting your team can only lead to disaster. They are fundamentally useless.
• You're the boss, which means you are smarter than the rest of your team. Make sure they know that. If the team has any ideas, they must be bad ideas. If they mention a good idea, it must be one that you were going to think of anyway, so it is your idea really.
• If anything goes wrong, it is because the team is incompetent. Only your brilliance and perseverance secures any successes for the team. Be clear about who deserves the credit and who deserves the blame.

(Image: Andrew, CC2.0)