Jay, IS manager for a major wholesale distributor , told Session 7 of the Leadership Development Lab:

“A couple of weeks ago, I came into my office to find forty requests for customer usage reports. With the implementation of our new main frame system, the reporting functionality of the system had been eliminated, meaning that my department was faced with an overload of requests for these reports in addition to our regular duties. The normal procedure for requests is a four-day advance notice. This protocol had not been followed by the users requesting the reports, which made the subject of “immediately needed” a hot spot for me.

The next day I came in to find 34 more report requests waiting in line. The national accounts sales manager came into my office and told me that all of the requests really needed to be completed last week. She told me that we had already missed the deadline for those reports to go to our national account customers. Instead of getting upset and hot about the short notice, though, I took the list of reports and asked if we could work out a solution without overloading my department and still get the reports to the customers within a week. Together, we agreed that if I could get the reports done by the end of the next week, the national accounts sales team would contact the customers and let them know that the reports would be delayed one

more week.

I was able to get the reports to the sales department on the time schedule that we agreed on without getting into arguments or confrontations (Leadership Principle #13 – Avoid Arguments).

The lesson I learned from this experience is that by working with the other departments in need of my services, my customers, and coming to a mutual agreement, I can accomplish both their objectives and mine without a great deal of unnecessary stress.

The action I call you to take is to work with other team members in other departments. Use Leadership Principle #5, See Things From The Other Person’s Point of View, when a conflict or confrontation seems ready to loom before you. The benefits you will obtain will be a better working team and results that satisfy all of your customers, internal and external, at the same time.”

If we don’t look at life from the customer’s point of view, we become disempowered. We can easily fall into the ‘why me’ victim mode. Seeing our world from the customer’s perspective gives us a mission perspective, which provides the purpose, meaning and empowerment we all seek.