On the necessity of a hyper-critical day

 

Stay positive. We hear this from teachers, friends, partners, bosses, and doctors. I’m guessing even godfather Don Corleone said it once to his lieutenants.  And there’s a reason for this hackneyed advice—99% of the time it works and works well. I hate working with a negative, irritating sour puss and I’m pretty sure you do to. 

Now let’s talk about the 1%. Not the wealthy 1%. The 1% of the time you should be critical and harsh in your thinking. Once a year or maybe twice a year, clear your schedule for a hyper critical day where all the stops are pulled out and skeptical/suspicious/unkind thoughts are allowed. Why? Because most of us are basically good people and are uncomfortable with highly critical thoughts. Much of this is subconscious, which is why you need to designate a day for extremely critical, even unpleasant thinking. It takes that to root out mistakes, bad decisions, excessive trust in people, organizations, and businesses.  You have to get up and say “Well, self. This is the day. I give myself permission to rain on the picnic and be nasty in my thinking.” Perversely, this can be one of your tools to achieve the best outcomes in your life. Here’s some examples:

• Vendors are liars and cheats. Maybe they really aren’t but on this day, you are going to think like that. Take your invoices, whether personal or for your organization and view them with a microscope, as if their intent was to nail you to the wall.  In the middle 1990s I was director of telecommunications for Enron. We negotiated a reasonably good deal with a telecom provider and put the contract in place. One day I just happened to look at some detailed bills and noticed that we were being charged a higher rate than negotiated. How could this happen? There should be dozens of eyes on a big contract. The problem got fixed.
  
  
• Vendors don’t pay attention to detail. Around the time of 9/11 I was in Detroit, working for PwC at an automotive industry client. Being a “raw data” kinda guy, I asked for a printout of invoices from vendors. Within five minutes we identified a $25K duplicate payment to “XYZ.”  Same company, same amount, same invoice number, same date. It was easy to spot. What happened? Some data entry person set up (presumably by accident) vendor XYZ and another person set up X.Y.Z. as a vendor. So the system saw two versions of the same vendor and didn’t flag a double payment.
  
  
• Sales people are predators. Once a new car salesman told me, in his most sincere voice, that I just had to get a more pricey model or face the consequences—I would have to remove one hand from the steering wheel to change the radio volume setting instead of using a built in steering wheel button. Sales people are not your friend. 
  
  
• Salesy-stan is not where you live. The best sales people paint a picture of happiness with their product and bleak remorse without it. Remember that you live in reality-stan. Be skeptical.
  
  
• Projects are funded more by politics than what is good for the company. Jeff Bezos does not allow fancy PowerPoints for a reason. It is too easy to distort reality. Add that to the natural tendency to promote the VP’s hobby horse over a less flashy but more important support project.  Be suspicious of those who sacrifice essential maintenance to pay for the next shiny thing.
  
  
• Look at your own bills with a critical eye. For example, your cell phone bill will almost always have junk you don’t need buried in the details. Make them explain what its for.  Every time I call about a billing issue, I reduce my monthly cost. 
  
  
• See any prospective employer as an exploiter. What aren’t you being told? Does the firm have a lot of debt? Frequent executive turnover? Many negative expressions from previous employees? Are offices too nice? Are you sacrificing hard dollars for the spectacular view and fancy title? 

All of this is extremely negative. I don’t believe what I said in bullets above is generally true. I have good friends who are vendors, work in sales, and serve as project managers. 99% of the time, you’ll be better off if you think positive thoughts about the people you work with. But take a day (don’t  tell anyone!) and think critically, up and down your life and business, so you can root out some of the icebergs which threaten your success. And really, you don't have to tell anyone; just do it.