I find Simon Sinek profoundly irritating. Those of you who have been exposed to him know that he has obtained a cult following on the Internet. If you have not been exposed to Simon then I am not encouraging you to look him up.
I have been forced to take to my dictaphone about this latest quote that came across my Linkedin page “There is no such thing as a good or bad decision”.
There are apparently ‘right decisions’ and ‘decisions that you can learn from’. I absolutely understand this mantra may hold weight in the context of a world where wrong decisions do not lead to consequences. Unfortunately (and also putting my Crown Solicitor hat on as well as my mother of teenagers hat), life is all about the fact that wrong decisions lead to such things as death or imprisonment and perhaps less dramatically personal grievance claims.
Sorry Simon, in the employment sphere, as in life, there is absolutely something that can be called a ‘wrong decision’.
Here go examples of 10 wrong decisions off the top of my head:
1. I go to a Detox Bootcamp to Thailand for 14 days with no eating, no alcohol, no caffeine and no escape (true story, true ‘wrong decision’).
2. Firing people by text.
3. Suspending people and not telling them what they are suspended for.
4. Putting on Facebook that you hate your employer (oh and then being surprised that the employer doesn’t want to pay you wages after you put the boot into them on social media)
5. Employing somebody on a 90 day trial period, not having them sign their employment agreement before they start, and then terminating them by relying upon the 90 day trial period. To be valid, a 90 day trial period must be contained in an individual employment agreement and the individual employment agreement has to be signed before the employee starts work.
6. Smoking cannabis habitually when your job involves heavy machinery and random drug testing.
7. Smoking cannabis habitually when your job involves heavy machinery and random drug testing, and then refusing to take the random drug test because you just admitted to the tester you think you might fail after smoking cannabis all weekend.
8. Throwing to the back of your lineout, when you are 4 points down, 10 meters out from your try line, there is a minute left on the clock and your lineout hasn’t worked all game.
9. Paying an HR expert to draft a one hundred page policy on how you will undertake disciplinary matters and completely ignoring it. Trust me employers, the more succinct the policy the better.
10. And number 10….listening to Simon Sinek.
