Another Unsuccessful Meeting---The Tantrum of a Stressed Out Business Owner

San Francisco, CA
November 4, 2010

Today I walked out on a meeting during the lunch break…I am not going back.

I paid a lot of money to fly out to California to attend a two day seminar for entrepreneurs. The brochure stated that the meeting would focus on learning to delegate, dealing with employee issues and developing a standard operating manual. I was very excited!


We spent the first morning getting to know each other. The thirty people attending owned their own businesses, and the majority of those companies had produced at least one million last year. We spent the day discussing the hardships of owning and working in a business. It was therapeutic, but I was getting restless. It’s great to discuss what was wrong with our businesses, but I was looking forward to learning the coping techniques promised in the brochure to manage these problems. At the close of the day, the instructor handed out a lengthy questionnaire. She requested we write down thoughtful answers to these questions so that we will have something to contribute to the session tomorrow.

So last night I spent almost an hour answering questions such as “What do I want my business to look like?” “Who is my competition?” “Who are my customers?” “What do I want my company to look like in ten years?”

These questions frustrated me! I already knew the answer to the first three, and based on the changes that have occurred in my office over the last ten years, I have no idea what my business will look like ten years from now. However, she had stated that we need to do more visionary and less operational work on our business, so I plodded through all fifty questions.

This morning I showed up ready to go but the instructor informed us that we would wait an additional ten minutes for the ‘stragglers’. The hair on the back of my neck started pricking. This is my built-in sign that I am getting aggravated with the situation. We were all told yesterday what time to be here this morning. Apparently, the ‘stragglers’ did not care about what they might miss, so why wait for them to begin the course? The people who showed up on time were obviously concerned about the course content not the ‘stragglers’. In dental school I had a professor who said he would respect the students who showed up on time for his class….by beginning on time. A funny thing happened – the dental students made it a point to be on time for his classes.

Once we finally got started, the instructor called on people to share their answers from the questionnaire. It quickly became apparent that some people did not complete the ‘homework’. The hair on the back of my neck became a full blown porcupine tail when she stated that she would give us thirty minutes to finish the work, and then we would all go over it together.

Really?

At my office, we call that rewarding the wrong people for the wrong actions.


How ironic. This was a course on how to deal with employee issues and incompetent work, and the instructor caters to tardy people and those who do not complete their assigned projects!

Frustrated, I went to sit by the pool. I was in California after all. I started chatting with other attendees. We discussed our individual reasons for attending this course and our plans for when we returned to our offices. This was the best half hour of the entire meeting. It was encouraging to know that I was not alone with my frustrations and fears regarding business ownership.
We returned to the meeting, and everyone contributed their answers. After two hours, I felt like we had beaten this subject into the ground. I caught the eye of some of my new friends and noticed that they were as uninterested as I was. Finally, she announced that we would break for lunch and then develop our mission statements when we returned for the afternoon session.

DEVELOP OUR MISSION STATEMENTS? The porcupine quills on the back of my neck started shooting out!

Most of us have been in business for years. My mission statement 10 years ago was to help children obtain a healthy smile while developing a positive opinion of the whole dental experience. It has not changed and it does not need to be developed.

Bewildered, I approached the instructor while the room was clearing out and inquired when we were going to discuss the operations manual- as promised in the syllabus. She stated that we would not be going over that particular material in this course. She explained that she ‘gets a feel for what her seminar attendees need’ and that’s how she plans the information presented in the course.

Gritting my teeth, I reminded her that most of the attendees already ran million dollar businesses. Therefore they probably have their mission statements down pat. However, the ‘feeling’ that I got while listening to the attendees by the pool while the slackers were finishing their homework was that we are overworked, burned out and would appreciate guidance on how to create an operations manual as promised in the syllabus!

Yes, I had an adult temper tantrum.

Disgusted I returned to my room and shot off a scathing email to her home office informing them that I wanted a refund due to the instructors’ failure to follow the published agenda. Needless to say I didn’t return for the afternoon session.

I refuse to sit through one more class where we are instructed to write our mission statement, define our goals and determine what we want the next ten years to look like. I wrote my mission statement twelve years ago and I do not want to change it. I hate writing down my goals because they change every day and I don’t know what the next ten years will bring. At this point in my life I am simply trying to get to the next year.

Later I saw one of the men who attended the course. I asked him whether she went over the steps for the operations manual after lunch and he said she did not. He also told me that half of the attendees didn’t return. This woman was clueless. She had no idea how to follow a syllabus. She did not respect the time of her participants and she refused to listen to constructive criticism. So of course I shot off another email to her home office informing them of these facts.

I guess you could call me a rebel. I do not have an MBA from a business school, but I run a successful dental office. A successful pediatric dental practice although I am a general dentist. Yes I like to break the rules. I like to ‘make it work’ when everyone tells me the things I want are impossible. So if you are a rebel, or you want to be a rebel we should get along just fine.

This book was written for you.