From “How to Write Email that GETS RESULTS & Other CEObservations”
In the United States especially, being blunt has gone out of style as communist “corporate culture” has become the rage. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that if you’re nice and non-confrontational to everyone, you’ll get better results and have happier employees. Now, everyone wants to be treated equally and have their ideas heard, and bosses are supposed to have open doors and be accessible to anyone and everyone, as if we’re friends, as if we’re equals.
Somewhere along the way, someone’s work stopped being a part of a bigger game and simply became incorporated into people’s lifestyles. “I live to work.” People like to say phrases like this, but that phrase is completely inaccurate. For someone to “live to work,” that person has to actually work in the first place and not chat, nap, daydream, stare out the window or whatever the hell else he’s doing when sitting at his desk. What’s more accurate is that people live to be at work because they have no lives outside of work.
Well, I’m not running a boarding house or social hall here. Get your work done and get the hell out of here. And while you’re here, work! My job is to make it as uncomfortable as possible for people to be at work so that they’ll actually work, get done and leave.
In order for me to do my job, and for you to become successful, bluntness is the key – it’s a survival skill. If you aren’t blunt, you will never be heard. Thick skin has been softened by years and years of not killing Germans. Comfortable living has turned a man’s brain into a mushy sponge to the point that what you say to him seems to enter a black hole in his brain. You know he heard you; he nodded his head, looked at you, responded verbally, but there’s little doubt that whatever you said was sucked into some lobeal abyss and this response about you having a good idea and that he will do something is simply a reflex.
When you’re blunt with people, they become instantly hurt, angry with you, want to quit, but then they go back to their desks and work harder out of spite, but most importantly, they think about what you say.
In people’s minds, they think they do a good job at work, and hence, they want to stay longer at the one place in this world where they feel like they’ve accomplished something, a place where they’re important, a place where they’re special.
It’s my job to break them, reiterate that I would hire a monkey if I could get one to use the toilet (and I’m considering looking past that), and get them to go home.
