I didn’t know. Nobody told me. Do you ever hear these phrases? Ever hear yourself using them? Almost every time I hear them, they are used as a defensive response or a way to avoid responsibility. Nobody told me, I didn’t know.
When phrases like these are uttered, someone is generally given a free one time use pass. They are forgiven or excused for not knowing. Used more than once in a while, the utterer is not well thought of.
For a few people, these phrases and others like them, are over used excuses. While exceptions occur, exceptions should be the exception and not the rule.
What is your common response when asked why you are or are not doing something? Are you one of the few, guilty of uttering not being told, or not knowing? Do you find yourself uttering these phrases a little too often?
 Not knowing, is a sign or symptom of more going in the background than the few words each phrase contains. No one told me, for example, has hidden meanings other than the obvious one. No matter where you work, no one has a job to make sure you know what you need to know after you are trained.
When something changes in your workplace, some form of communication is used telling you what has changed. If you hear yourself using these phrases more than once in a long while, below are some ideas you can use to ensure you rarely utter them again, if ever.
The key to knowing is to be proactive. Being proactive is a very effective tool you can use in your work and personal life. Being proactive, you always learn or know about changes that are important to you.
One of the best ways to be proactive is to pay attention. Some way, somehow in your place of work, there is a system in place of how information is passed on. Learn how important information is passed on.
Find out if your company uses email, a bulletin board, a formal shift meeting, or the person you relieve is supposed to tell you. Make your first job of the day reading, listening,or asking about: “What is going on, anything new today?”
Asking a simple question like this and actively listening to the answer will save you from ever uttering a hollow excuse again. Once you get used to reading, and asking questions, you will know what you need to know. You will know about any changes, and you will look sharp, and become more valuable at work.
Occasionally something changes and you really had no way of knowing. Instead of reaching for a new way of saying you did not know, or were not told, you can use a much more powerful tool.
You can say: I read, listened to, or checked for changes, and there was nothing posted, sent, or mentioned. I asked ‘somebody’ who I took over from, and they did not mention any changes.
If the power of response escapes you, go back and read the first paragraph of this post and compare the two responses. Which reply would you rather give, and which reply would you rather hear? There is a lot of power in words used correctly.
If you are new on the job, and you truly did not know, be honest about it. Follow up honestly with a good question. “I was not aware of this, how and where do I find out about these changes?” Phrasing your reply like this, you will be way ahead of others, who automatically fall back on those old, worn out, ‘I didn’t know’ type phrases.
Now you know how to be on top of your job and your life, you can identify how important information is not being passed on to you. If you find that there is no formal way information is passed on, suggest a way! Using your new proactive way of being, suggest a new or better way of passing on information or changes. Think of a method that is easy and everyone see, hear, or read and let someone know in a professional manner, who can make it happen. It may get you a raise!
If you have taken any business classes, work for a corporation, or enjoy strategy games, you probably have heard of Sun Tzu. This little treatise of approximately sixty-two-hundred characters has been studied, taught in war college, business classes for many centuries.
Sun Tzu’s writing is a good asset for business because it lays a foundation a business can follow to thrive and survive in their appropriate market(s). Sun Tzu’s, “Art Of War” provides a focusing lense leading to success for any size business. It has been said that Sun Tzu and Niccolò Machiavelli are all the only business partners one needs for business success.
Unfortunately these business partners have found themselves being used in areas where they are ineffective and self defeating. In arenas of friendship and cooperative work towards a common goal, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli ruin more friendships and joint efforts than they help.
Some people in todays overly competitive society have discarded appropriate and accepted forms of personal interaction and instead create for themselves a world of thinly disguised guerilla warfare and subterfuge.
 Competition holds a valid place in business. Healthy competition between areas of a business helps competing groups reach a higher level than would be possible without competition. Competition among employees in the same work group, where some are waging war against their coworkers to promote themselves is destructive for the group and the parent company.
Utilizing Sun Tzu and Machiavelli for whole life management is not only destructive, it is dangerous. It destroys friendships, relationships, and families, leaving one isolated and alone. Family life and friendships are just that. Friendship and family life is a place where one can go to leaving the outside world behind.
Life is a series of battles and struggle, but as with an army, there has to be a place where one can go and relax and recuperate. A place where one can be themselves without worrying beyond good manners about what is happening around them.
For anyone living a life comprised of total personal war and continuos competition I suggest a new direction. I propose, “The Art Of Friendship”. Create a life where the Art of Friendship can survive and thrive makes everyone more effective in other areas of their life.
The Art of Friendship is a way of dealing with people around you who share your interests, either business or personal and benefits everyone by making everyone more effective and prosperous. Instead of planning assassinations of coworkers or friends who’s interests are a little too close to our own, look for ways to work together and share in the glow of excellence instead of the the false glow of simply winning.
Allowing those around you to work jointly towards a common goal, is not only more personally satisfying, it is powerful. Instead of working as a single entity, having more people to work together towards the same goal increases the chance of success, and reduces failure from something not considered by an individual.
These days to many people see themselves as a lone warrior out battling the forces against them. What they are really doing is creating is a vacuum, where everything that could be accomplished with help can not be done because no one is willing to risk helping.
Same as a single stick being easily broken, whereas a tied bundle of sticks can not, working together in friendship and trust creates environments where everyone wins more than any individual can alone.
Business in many respects is a game of chess, consisting of moves and counter moves. Although chess is played by one individual competing against a second individual, the individual pieces on the chess board are acting as a team with a common goal. The complete team of chess pieces wins the chess match, not an individual chess piece. Try working with your coworkers and friends instead of trying to better them, and see what you can conquer as a complete functioning team, and not a single chess piece.
I like management. I enjoy the different ways we choose to make their world work for ourselves. To be the most successful manager is more of an art form than a method, as a method can only take you so far. The very successful managers follow a blueprint method they studied, and then put into practice. The most brilliant managers however take a certain management style, and made it their own with minor tweaks and changes.
There has always been a type of manager that most people do not like, and yet they are successful. They can be identified easily because you never know what they are about to do in the next second. I remember the first person with this type of management I actually worked with was in the military. He was my Squadron Commander, and by all accounts he was quite successful. There was quite a grade difference between him, and those at my level. He was quite friendly, and affable, but talking with him was like walking on proverbial eggshells.
You had to be very careful with him, because the slightest improper remark that you never even noticed until he reminded you who owned your world, had you on the immediate defensive for a harmless comment. You found yourself trying to defend something said that needed no defense, because he decided it was somehow inappropriate. For a few very tense moments, your immediate future was very much undetermined.
I was watching the history channel this last weekend. They do a series named Gangland, and that is where the mystery was solved for me. One of the men on the show mentioned that he was told to study the classics, especially Niccolo Machiavelli. I never heard much about Machiavelli except a mention in some odd book here and there. This week I decided as I was book challenged I would brush up on Niccolo Machiavelli.
It seems he is a whole new aspect in the management arena. All by himself he determined an optimum method of management that had the most direct results in the shortest and least painful amount of time and effort. It is an adoption of Niccolo Machiavelli that these odd but interesting people use to control their empires, no matter how large or small.
What makes these people unique is they are successful because they are focused on their own success, without any concern over those around them, above them, or below them. As an example, Niccolo Machiavelli watched Ceseare Borgia carve out his own little empire. Borgia had used some mercenaries which was common at the time to quell unrest in a province recently taken under his control.
The officer in charge of the mercenaries did his job so well that unrest over the loss of the kingdom was quelled in record time. An unexpected outcome however was there was new unrest over the brutality and violence of the mercenaries over the previous few months. Borgia realized he was about to lose his newly won territory, and had to act quickly and decisively.
Ceseare Borgia called the mercenary commander to his headquarters out of the province for a meeting. Four days later the officer’s body, now in two pieces, was found in the province’s town square where it was left for weeks for all to see. Machiavelli realized Ceseare Borgia was a person who would do whatever had to be done in order for his goals to be achieved. He watched others at least as ruthless as Ceseare Borgia, and developed an appreciation for their abilities to get their way. No one or nothing was important enough, or loved enough to be a hindrance to their individual desire.
It has been was written about Niccolo Machiavelli, he would commit murder and sleep soundly if it improved his long turn objective. Not many of us are willing to go to those extremes for our wants to be met. Having the world, or your part of it fear, despise, and hate you, is not something most people aspire to. But when you come in contact with these people who do not act quite right, look a little closer, and ask them how they sleep at night. You might be in for quite an experience if you pay close attention to them.
Everywhere I look, I see someone who I know doesn’t have it going on like I think I do, yet they are doing it. They have arrived at a place I can not imagine, but I can see what they have once they get there. What is so odd is they are not brilliant, they are mostly average people. But they are at a point in their life when everything is going their way.
Like the woman who started making those trinkets that go on those nice spongy shoes, and later sold what became her company for an amazing amount of money. The immigrant families in the poorest part of my city, who now own their own business. They probably started selling in public places, struggling to keep their dream going.
Tunnel vision is my problem. It is tunnel vision that keeps me from seeing everything these people went through before success arrived at their doorstep. I never saw the times when they cried in frustration, or were harassed by the police, or slept in the cold because all their money was going into making their future. I never saw that part of their life back then, I just see where they are now.
I can not see what they saw a long time before. I never had that burning desire to run my own business no matter what obstacle got in my way. I was never interested in seeing if I could take something, add some value to it, and sell it to someone else who thinks they were getting a deal.
I was in Korea a number of years ago. There was a young couple there who made very pretty wooden boxes. They were not the most elegant, but they were made with care. They wanted fifty dollars for the one I wanted. I have no doubt it was worth fifty dollars, but it was not worth that much to me. I told the couple I would pay twenty dollars. I saw them at least once a week in the month I in Korea. Every time I saw them, they said fifty dollars. I said twenty, and they scoffed and spit as they said no. As I was getting on the bus for the last time before I left their country, they said twenty five. I said no, twenty was my offer, I would pay no more.
They cursed at me, spit, made faces at me, and sold me the box I had wanted for a month, for a mere twenty dollars. I almost felt guilty, because I knew the profit they would be making was not very large, perhaps only a dollar or two at most, and that would not cover their time in making it, polishing it, and making it look so pretty. Yet they sold that box to me. They knew if they did not sell it to me, they would have a very hard time finding another buyer with cash money. We only showed up in Korea in those numbers for one month out of the year.
That is a big difference between people who have their own business, and myself. I never would have sold that box to me. They knew they had too, to keep their business going another day. I would have lost my business to my ego, my pride, or my business ignorance. I bet they are wealthy store keepers by now. They are wealthy, savvy, and hard to do business with sort of people. They deserve it too, because all those years ago, they knew what they had to do to be survive another business day, and even though they hated me, and what they were forced into, they did it anyway.
They have business vision, and I have business myopia. If I met them again today, I would gladly give them the thirty more dollars they asked for all those years back. I understand now, and they helped me to understand that day at the bus stop. I really enjoy the homemade burritos, and specialties I come across now and then. I hope they are all successful with their vision, and I remain satisfied with mine.
I was at a pet store buying yet another weeks worth of cat food at $.60 cents a can, or $.30 cents per day for each cat when I had a thought. I was watching television a few weeks ago and something came on about the number of deer killed on Illinois highways was about ten thousand deer a year! According to the show, the state of Illinois composts the dead deer as it the cheapest way to safely dispose of the dead deer.
And I am in a pet store paying $.60 cents a can for cat food made from venison because it is cheap compared to other flavors, and the cat’s like it! I did a Google search on the words, ‘dead deer landfill’, and the probable national numbers of government disposed dead deer are mind boggling by any stretch of the imagination. Of course as things go I could not find anything worthwhile on that search for Illinois, but I found some numbers for the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. The rest of the country’s daily deer kill can be imagined from those numbers.
One insurance company referenced, estimates about 101,000 deer are killed each year in the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York! There is a problem with wasting disease in some states around the United States, so cutting the numbers I found in half, that still is over 50,000 dead deer that could be used for cat and dog food.
I started wondering why those animals are not turned into pet food? Why is there canned cat and dog food in pet stores all starting at $.50 or higher a can, and a titanic number of pounds of deer meat that could be made into pet food just wasted? Some areas and states are paying high fees to have deer carcasses disposed of because there are too many dead deer to go into landfills.
Guessing that the usable meat on average from even those 50K dead deer is 50 pounds an animal, that works out to 2,500,000 pounds of possible high protein pet food thrown away in those three mentioned states alone! I ran it across my little calculator twice, because that is such an amazing number, an estimated two million five hundred thousand pounds of deer meat wasted each year in just three states. Wow!
The can size I buy for $.60 is six ounces, but for the sake of simple math, let’s pretend it is five ounces. That comes out to roughly 833,000 cans of cat food. 833,000 cans of cat food at sixty cents a can comes out to just short of a cool half million dollars! There has to be some sort of profit in there somehow? That is just from three states! Once that figure goes across the major deer road kill states in the United States…well you get the idea.
The same idea can be applied to the more distasteful animal killings in the world. If we are legally killing a species of animal just for its fur, or some other part of it, why can’t they be transformed into pet food? At least they would not go to waste completely. I am not advocating the killing of any animals only for their fur, but it happens, and we should make the most of it we can.
Here in the Southwest, there are companies that buy used cows (dead cattle) from stockyards and holding pens. They manage to make a profit and they are paying for a cow carcass that is no longer useful for human consumption. I sure am not an expert on business, and I am not sure my math is all that good either, but the concept is there, and I am sure someone could figure out how to make a profit at it?
It sure does seem like there is some money in road kill deer pet food for someone where a pet food cannery exists? Or maybe I don’t have a clue, let me know?
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Not knowing, is a sign or symptom of more going in the background than the few words each phrase contains. No one told me, for example, has hidden meanings other than the obvious one. No matter where you work, no one has a job to make sure you know what you need to know after you are trained.
