"If you decide that you’re indecisive, which one are you?” —Anonymous

Perhaps that’s a beginning…perhaps your first venture into taking charge…perhaps you’re beginning to manage your life or some aspect of it. That’s a good thing. With any aspect of your life, you need to employ a strategy to achieve the results you want. You have to pay attention, evaluate the situation, visualize the outcome you want, make decisions, act on those decisions, appreciate the opportunity, and enjoy your life in the moment. Fairly simple strategy, but you do have to employ it; you have to manage it.

“Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.
If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.” —Bob Parsons

Now it’s not that I want to go around looking for problems; I want to manage areas before things get out of control. Success is often in managing the details. In most every business there are several fairly similar categories of operation. You have sales and marketing, customer service, production, distribution, and billing and accounting. You have to manage these areas—all of them. If sales is running smoothly but customer service is lacking, you can count on sales not running smoothly pretty soon. If you don’t pay attention and manage it, it will deteriorate.

“Forget about the sales you hope to make and
concentrate on the service you want to render.”
— Harry Bullis

Sales and service go hand in hand—and those hands should be attached to happy, helpful people who serve with a smile! My wife, Janet, and I fly every month on commercial airlines. Therefore, we deal with some of the challenges presented by flights that are a little delayed or some situation beyond the person we’re going to talk with who represents the airline. What a difference a calm, smiling person can make amid the chaos. That person can manage the situation and create a positive outcome.

We also must go through security at every airport. The TSA person who has a smile, a friendly greeting, or little joke can set the tone in a completely different direction than a grumpy sourpuss who apparently doesn’t appreciate having a job at all!

“In business you get what you want by giving
other people what they want.”
— Alice MacDougall

On a recent trip, my son Adam wore a T-shirt with a picture of the Beatles on the front. The TSA agent stopped him from passing through security and said, “OK, you can come through if you can give me some of the Beatles’ songs.” He started singing, but she stopped him. “No, I don’t want you to sing. I want you to tell me the names of the songs.” She was unaware that Adam not only knows every Beatles’ song; he knows every word to every Beatles’ song. She was impressed. The people around us all smiled as did the other TSA personnel. This person humanized the experience; she helped everyone relax and smile. Everyone benefitted because she did her best to give the passengers something they wanted—a friendly, positive experience in a situation that can be tedious. She was managing the situation.

It’s always simple if you think about treating the person you’re dealing with exactly the way you want to be treated. Don’t you just want people to be helpful to you when you are in need of a product or service? Manage it.