Managing the drama

Editor’s note: Michelle Stockman is an independent consultant with her company, Fort Smith-based Msaada Group. Stockman earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University-Chicago in communications and fine arts, and earned a master’s in entrepreneurship from Western Carolina University. Her thoughts on business success appear each week on The City Wire.

Drama is defined in Merriam-Webster’s as “a state, situation, or series of events involving interesting or intense conflict of forces; i.e. it is a dramatic state, effect or quality.”

Like storms and seasons in our lives, drama sails through our days as an invited or surprise visitor. Business is not immune from drama despite the best hiring, human resources and policies possible for a business to adopt. In fact, businesses entertain “situations” worthy a new reality show.

For example, an entrepreneur hired a new office manager to take on the growing number of administrative tasks the business owner no longer could manage alone while continuing to grow the business. The newly hired office manager quickly became a good friend and trusted employee through the ups and downs of the business. As the business continued to grow, the office manager’s attitude began to change and became suspicious. While the business owner thought the employee’s behavior was off, nothing in the office changed.

Two months later, the office manager was out of the office for vacation. During that week, the business owner looked through the mail to find invoices for materials he knew the business never purchased. With little time for a complete audit, the business owner investigated the invoices that were received that week to find the good employee had engaged in embezzlement of company funds. This drama creates many small business nightmares, and calls for quick action to save the business.

Another business drama often deals with vendors for small businesses. One such vendor that all businesses use coincide with utility companies. Utility companies are essential to all businesses, and you seldom have a choice between electric or gas providers. Luckily, there are plenty of options for phone and other essential services. One small business on start-up had a few large problems that consumed more of their start-up funds than planned. Since the business was not at a point of covering all its bills, the business owners needed to make partial utility payments for two months in a row.

This partial payment opened the door for one utility company to threaten to shut off service unless the small struggling business paid a newly assigned deposit of two times the amount of their average bill. The other utility company simply threatened to shut off service. With no other options of assistance during this down time, the entrepreneurs could not manage the utility fines without jeopardizing payroll or tax payments. Furthermore, when the employees saw the business struggling, they began to fear for their jobs.

The unfortunate side effects of drama in the business include growing distrust between ownership or management and the employees (or vendors, business partners and customers); increasing the stress and anxiety levels of the people involved directly as well as indirectly; and exposing company weaknesses in a negative fashion.

Businesses need to look at drama like a poison inching closer to the heart of the business with each pulse.

Preventing drama is like predicting when you are going to win the lottery, but being prepared to manage what “state, situation or series of events” may invade your business allows for quick actions minimizing any negative affects for the organization.

The first step in drama management is learning how to recognize the problems. Next, creating conflict resolution strategies for dealing with the drama in the different areas that affect your business and executing those conflict resolution strategies in a timely manner are essential.

Knowing that life happens to everyone, don’t fret the occasional sick day, family emergency, vendor blip or slip, or customer problem. When the occasional bump turns into a set of hurdles in the road is when to address the problems quickly.

When your employee’s bad day turns into an overall bad attitude, it’s time to extinguish the fire. When your vendor makes more excuses than fulfills promises or your customers continue to lose your invoices, it’s time for you to take action.

In business, you can save the drama for the local theater by focusing on business goals rather than allowing distractions to grow.

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Stockman can be reached at [email protected]