Sometimes, I’m still amazed when “business people” (or those who claim to be professionals) dismiss good, or logical ideas without a reasonable or acceptable answer. I SHOULDN’T be surprised, because a lot of people are driven by their own need to be important. Over the years, I’ve seen it many times, and I have no problem admitting that sometimes those ‘leaders’ have information they can’t share, which makes their decision appear to be a poor one. I think more often though, those bad decisions come from their thinking that they need to be smarter than the people they serve (or, who report to them.)
One of my more recent experiences was with the shockingly simple example of using digital calendars when planning business meetings. The employees of a company that work with many groups around the State, would send emails with dates and times for meetings. But, considering that the company sent lots of other emails, it was easy to lose track of the “important” emails that contained meeting information. At first, I just asked them to send calendar invites to supplement their regular emails, but they just ignored the requests. Then I brought it up during group phone calls, but the idea was “nicely” dismissed. When I pushed the point again, the answer they elected to use honestly dumbfounded me… in the year 2023, when business people have been using computers, technology – and electronic calendars – for at least 20+ years, their answer was “everyone uses a different system, so it doesn’t work – which is why we don’t send calendar invites.” No kidding – that was what they came up with.
I’ve been doing software and tech since the early 1990s. So unless you’re still using an internal Domino email system, there’s no issue issue with Google Calendar invites going to a Microsoft Outlook user… or Office 365 calendar invites going to a Yahoo Mail user – all of those systems know how to handle different calendaring systems. Sure, not everyone who has email uses calendaring – but business people do. So, I asked several people from my counterpart groups if they had problems getting calendar invites from different systems. Every one of them said they use calendaring, and have no problems getting invites from different systems… but I already knew that from years of technical working and consulting. Plus, as any real business person who uses technology knows, if it doesn’t work – you can still see the invitation details in the body of the email. No problem.
And so, the conclusion is… “If It’s Not Their Idea, It’s Bad.” And since people with that personality want to look smarter than they are, they can’t accept when someone else is right. In business – where you use computers and technology – digital calendaring is a common business practice.
For myself, the frustration caused by those people sometimes pushes my buttons – but ultimately, those ‘not as smart as they think they are’ people just make it easier to see them for who they really are – and so makes it helps me to weed out the dolts and look for smarter people.
This plaque that once sat on Ronald Reagan’s desk at the White House are words to live by: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
