“We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson
Employees can be aggravating. They will not listen to you. They will make mistakes constantly. And they will never be as good as you were when you had their job.
It’s time for a reality check if this is your attitude towards those who work for you. It doesn’t matter if these statements may be true. It doesn’t matter how well you did your job back when you had their job. What matters now is getting everyone to perform at levels that are productive, profitable and acceptable.
The same holds true for employee mistakes. Don’t hold past errors against anyone when you are analysing present performance. It’s quite possible that even the biggest error was simply an accident. It doesn’t mean that they will screw up the Excel file every time they use it or mess up every sales presentation. What’s done is done – so, as Lyndon B. Johnson stated, learn to let go and move on.
