Ready For Bid

Before you hit send . . .

Del, Exhaust Manager for a full-service fire protection company based in Roseburg, OR, told Session 2B of the Leadership Development Lab™:

“Back in 2008 I was hired on with C&S Fire Safe Services as Leadman on one of our restaurant exhaust cleaning trucks. Our job is to solve the number one cause of restaurant fires, we clean commercial kitchen exhaust systems in restaurants. In November 2018 Steve Potter the owner of C&S promoted me to Exhaust Supervisor. I was so excited! I was ready for a change, greater responsibility with more opportunity.

“My Supervisor position includes going out to new restaurant clients, taking pictures of the kitchen equipment of the new client’s jobs and then sending the picture and specification back to the office for Steve to work up the quote. In June 2019 I went into a new restaurant, took pictures of all the equipment, then went out to my truck and finished the paperwork which included all the equipment model numbers and specifications. Then I dictated into my phone my message to Steve an email saying, ‘The job is ready for a bid.’ About five minutes later, our office manager Kaylynn sent me an email saying, ‘They are ready for bed b****?!’ I looked at the email I had sent to Steve and Kaylynn and sure thing my phone had interpreted and sent something different, way different than the message I thought I had dictated. Man, did I have egg on my face!

“The lesson I learned from this experience is the importance of always reading the emails I dictate before hitting the send button.

“The action I call you to take with all of our modern time saving devices and especially with cell phone emails, texts, and messages is to be sure you read your messages carefully before you hit send.

“The benefit you will gain is less egg on your face. You will always have a professional image with everyone in your world.”

To save time and maintain the professional decorum we all aspire to, we may need to slow down just a little bit. I know this experience caused Del to slow down a little on his dictated messages. I can assure you it didn’t slow him down. With Del’s leadership, C & S’s Exhaust Division’s 2019 sales were the best ever in their 43-year history and Del’s goals for Exhaust Division sales in 2020 are for a 40% increase over 2019. Del told us every time he states his goal, he gets a charged-up feeling.

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high, and we miss it, but that it is too low, and we reach it.”

~ Michelangelo

When you state your goals for 2020, do you get a chill up your spine, that “charged up feeling?” Its not too late, you can restate, remake your 2020 goals today. You can set them higher – set them high enough that every time you state them you get that “charged up feeling.”