(Photo: Dad with yours truly riding shotgun and four of my five siblings tagging along)
A few weeks ago I asked the question, Is It Time to Leave and wrote about the reasons why people pack up and call it quits.
People vote with their feet. (Or in the case of the photo above, with a lawnmower and a little red wagon!)
Today we’ll take it a step further and share the stories of two leaders who chose to leave their jobs and one who is running for office to try and make things better.
Story #1: National Big Box Consumer Electronics Store Manager
I was hired to speak at a National Leadership Conference in Dallas for a major big box store. (They were hoping to get Les Brown, but instead they got me.) The Vice-President was very “hands on” when it came to creating the content for my leadership sessions and insisted I present six programs, back-to-back, at the one-day conference.
My business was just getting off the ground and, with three kids to feed, I took any kind of work I could get. During a break, I was approached by one of the store managers. He had a few things to say about the way their organization was run.
He said, “The stuff you’re teaching here today all sounds great, but it’s not going to make a difference in the way they treat us.”
He went on, “As an example, Bill, one of our top store managers, was looking forward to this conference, but couldn’t be here today.”
I asked why.
“The tipping point was when he asked for a day off to attend his daughter’s First Communion.” (A significant sacrament and important milestone in the Catholic Church where a baptized child receives the Eucharist for the first time, around the age of seven or eight.)
He went on. “The day off was approved months in advance, but a week or so beforehand the big boss decided he needed Bill at the store. They planned to send a sales flyer out in the newspaper that week, so Bill’s day off got cancelled.”
“What happened next?”
“He said it was the last straw and he quit so he could attend his daughter’s First Communion. It’s just the way they do things around here. They talk a good game, but when we need their support for something important, they let us down time after time. Bill’s better off though. It didn’t take too long before he got scooped up by a better outfit.”
“One mistake will never kill you. The same mistake over and over again will.” ―Harvey MacKay, author, Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive
Story #2: Big Box Retail Store Manager
This gentleman had worked for decades at the company. But one day he up and quit.
Why? He was stretched too thin, traveled too much and had to spend significant amounts of time away from his family.
25 years of institutional knowledge. A great work ethic. A wonderful personality. Solid performance.
Such a loss for them. Perhaps an opportunity for him.
In both instances, you could have seen it coming. Each had families to support. And most likely they each spoke up and raised issues that could have been addressed. People put up with bad conditions for only so long and then they act.
Leadership Spotlight:
L.A. Mayoral Candidate and Wildfire Survivor, Spencer Pratt, Tackles the L.A. Housing Crisis
“Recent reporting has showed that residents are fleeing LA County in hordes. Last year, we saw the largest population decline in the country, losing 54,000 residents, and that’s a continuation of an ongoing trend, not an anomaly.
…we all know that people are fed up with this city and they are leaving. But the more important detail…if people are fleeing LA, that means we have thousands of vacancies, and they’re not being filled…
If you want more housing development, you need more economic development. And if you want more economic development, you need to clean the streets, enforce the law, and make it faster and cheaper to cut through the bureaucratic logjams that slow down development. When you drive through thriving metropolises like Nashville, Austin, Miami…you see something that you don’t see at all in Los Angeles…cranes. Cranes are a totem of a thriving, developing community; a beacon of git-r-dun. You only get cranes when you cut red tape.
I happen to have a bit of experience with this in my own rebuilding purgatory in the Palisades, so I know a thing or two about what trips up housing construction. When I am Mayor, I am fast-tracking construction. I will cut approval times for all projects under 4 stories. I will reallocate budget to hire 300+ plan checkers/inspectors for faster reviews. I will roll out a citywide program allowing licensed architects/engineers to self-certify code compliance on qualifying projects, as the Federal government has done for the Palisades. I will also push to repeal the counterproductive Measure ULA that places an onerous tax burden on real estate transactions. It has effectively frozen the market, as nobody wants to trigger a taxable event.” —Spencer Pratt
Read the whole article here.
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” —Max DePree
In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
Now, I’m in no position to tell anyone who to vote for (“But hey L.A. ==> Spencer Pratt”) and I don’t live anywhere near L.A., but most of us can spot leadership qualities a mile away. People are tired of the homeless problem, the drugs, filth, crime, high costs, high taxes and crushing regulatory burdens.
We’re certainly tired of it here in Colorado. Colorado is currently the third most expensive state to live in, ranked 47th in affordability in the U.S. We also rank third in the nation for overall crime with the eighth highest violent crime rate and the fourth highest property crime rate. (Hey Colorado ==> Michael Allen for Attorney General)
And like the people described above, some will quit and others will stay and try to make things better. No matter where you are across the country, people want a “git ‘er done” type person who can deliver much better results. They want to live in communities that are safe, affordable, deliver quality education for their children and offer jobs, without taxing them to the moon and back.
We need leaders who aren’t afraid to tackle the tough stuff and keep people from leaving. They’re out there. And as Pratt says, “You just have to look around.”