Do politician’s comments intrigue you?

It makes you wonder why some of them keep getting elected, isn’t it?

Some background; when I was in my 30’s to my early 40’s I was an elected politician on a local level in the city we lived. I always took great pride in working for the common people and did not ever ask for donations to run my campaigns. So it is with intrigue that I watch some of the campaign that are going on. It appears at times that the politicians brain-trust don’t think before they create a platform of ideas to get them to vote for them.

One mayoral candidate has one slogan that states; ‘We need to get people moving now.’ Sounds like a good basic idea doesn’t it? Then you read a little deeper into this politician’s policies you find the following; “Make curbs safer by using right angles. Think about a curb today. Its corners are curved, which allows cars to turn faster. By making them squared, or right-angled, the car has to turn more slowly.”

So if you want to get people moving now, but you want to make sure it is harder to make a right turn, thus slowing the car – isn’t this defeating the purpose.

Who does this have anything to do with business or an organization?

It has a lot to do with it. Many times an organization creates policies on the fly to take care of small incidences, so that they will not happen again. But the challenge is that when you create policies or plans on the fly without a main organizational objective agreed to and in place, you can create ‘dumb’ policies that work against what the organization should be doing.

What can you do?

Ask yourself these questions;

• What’s the main objective of this organization?
• Does this policy, plan or activity fit with our main objective?