Managers Must Choose Their Battles Carefully



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The most difficult choices you’ll ever have to make as a manager are in choosing your battles. You need to answer three questions:

1.) Which battles can be won?
2.) Which battles do I have to win?
3.) Which battles are best not to fight?

You can’t win all battles. For example, you shouldn’t resist if a mugger sticks a gun in your back and demands your money. Other battles can be won but the price of winning is too high. Taking a customer to small claims court over an unpaid $20 invoice is unwise when the court cost is $75.

An example often brought up by managers is employees who smoke. Smoking in the office was acceptable thirty years ago. Allowing smokers to light up at their desks today will run off non-smokers. While you’re not legally required to allow smokers a place to smoke, failing to do so would probably cause you to lose smoking employees. A reasonable solution is to forbid smoking in the office but allow it outside. The next battle is how many smoke breaks to allow. If smokers take ten smoke breaks per day and non-smokers take only two, we have a question of fairness. We need to hold everyone to the same number of breaks regardless of what they choose to do while on break. The next battle will be the non-smoker who complains about the cigarette odor from the smoker. This is a battle you should allow the smoker to win. We all sit next to smokers on airplanes, in movie theatres and even at church. Expecting you to provide a smoke free office is reasonable. Expecting smokers not to smell like smoke is not.

Even law enforcement has to choose their battles. Legendary lawman Elliott Ness spent years trying to bust Al Capone for murder and organized crime. He couldn’t do it. Prosecutors eventually put Capone away for tax evasion. Ness felt as though he failed. I visited Capone’s cell in Alcatraz and can testify it was sufficient punishment, no matter what the charge was. A conviction for tax evasion isn’t as illustrious as a conviction for murder, but it did the job.

Your battles may not be as serious as law and order, but choosing them wisely will still have a huge impact on your effectiveness as manager. So how do you decide which battles you need to win? Start by asking these questions. (1.) How much will this matter in five days? (2.) How much will this matter in five months? (3.) How much will this matter in five years? You’ll be amazed at how much clarity you will gain once you answer these three questions.



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A girlfriend of mine called me up this weekend looking for a DVD copy of an older piece of software. She was rebuilding a computer for a family member who had the product key but no installation media. I’m sure many of you have similar stories trying to fix or repair computers for your family and friends.

One of the nice things about using software online or “in the cloud” so to speak is that if your computer goes belly up and you need to rebuild it, the software will be there waiting for you, as soon as you can get computer back online.

For businesses, using online services can give you greater flexibility to pursue projects or try out ideas without having large upfront costs as well as providing  foundational IT infrastructure without investing in your own data center.

While a post I wrote a little while ago outlined the basics of traditional software licensing, I figured I should follow up with how to license software in the cloud since online software subscriptions are becoming more prevalent. This short video does a good job at laying things out – like why you’d want to consider using online services and some of the advantages and cost-savings of licensing software this way:

Microsoft has several online services: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Windows Azure Platform, Windows Intune and others. Each service can be purchased through a volume licensing agreement or the Microsoft Online Subscription Program and then activated and managed managed through web portals:

One day I’d love there to just be one portal to manage all your online subscriptions (kind of like one ring to rule them all but much less evil) but consolidation takes time and so I make no promises but I trust this is the direction our Online Services folk are heading.

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