Tip: You Can’t Push a Rope
October 29, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Not everyone is ready to follow your advice, no matter how brilliant.
It may be the wrong time. It may be the wrong company. You may not have the clout or persuasion to get management over its inertia.
Your job is to gauge the best course of action and provide advice. If you have laid out the pros and the cons, and the consequences of not following the course of action you propose, you have to let things take their course.
People will not be led if they don’t want to be. If you can find a way to document the impact of inaction, they may be ready to change course six months from now. Maybe never. Maybe a slightly different approach will get the nod.
Tricking management into doing something it doesn’t want to do may work sometimes, but that approach is more likely to poison relationships. Unless you have leeway to do some skunkworks trials, you may have to just drop your smart idea.
If you can’t live with that, you’re either too thin-skinned, or you’re working at (or consulting for) the wrong place. Decide if you want to do something about that, and do what’s right for you. Just don’t complain when no one will follow your advice.
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Tags: business, management, decision-making, choice, style, independence, leadership
I enjoyed this advice. One of the main worries I have about getting out in the job world is that my boss or client won’t take me seriously because of my age. I am usually good about standing up for myself and my ideas or opinions, but I think I may back down when put in a business situation. I am just going to have to constantly remind myself that just because someone disagreed with my opinions or ideas, it doesn’t mean that I am bad at my job.
Esoteric mixed metaphors are causing a lot of confusion in corporate America, particularly among managers who’re trying to sound original.
Have you ever heard the one, you “can’t push a noodle up a mountain”? Well, we have a manager in my office so full of himself that his latest white paper sacrifices substance for style - if you want to call it that.
That’s what we’ve become.
Also, in response to “Quit trying to push the rope” opinion above, it’s time for your company to rip you off like an old bandaid. If you’re going to treat people like cattle, that’s all you’ll ever have.