Note: Here’s a story my Dad shared with me. It was part of the minister’s message at his church one day. I’ve been waiting for a good time to share it with you. Seems like now is a good time since we’ve been talking about seeds.
Here’s the story:
The CEO had built a good company. Strong productivity. High morale. Lots of opportunity for growth. He was ready to retire and hoped to select his successor from the six managers who reported to him.
He called the managers together and gave each of them a mustard seed. He explained that he wanted each of them to plant and take care of the seed over the next six months. At that time, he would bring them all back together and whichever one of them had done the best job with the seed would become the next CEO of the company.
The managers were a bit perplexed about the assignment, but each one wanted the promotion and took the assignment seriously. Each manager went out and bought a pot and soil or delegated it to someone else. And each one watered and fertilized the dirt or delegated it to someone else.
During the occasional visits to each other’s offices, the managers would check out the competition. For months, all pots were bare. Nothing but dirt.
That changed slowly but surely. Signs of life started showing up in one of the pots. Then another. And another. Until all the pots now had plants growing in them. All except Doug’s.
He was devastated. He couldn’t figure it out. He had watered. He had fertilized. He had given it the proper sun light. But there was no sign of growth in his pot. He continued watering and fertilizing and worrying and hoping and reading about other action he might take. And each time he visited the office of one of his colleagues, he looked in disbelief at the beautiful lush plant that had come from that little tiny seed.
What Doug didn’t know was that each of the managers had his own “little secret”. Each of them had purchased a plant to put in his pot and had not told a soul.
Six months had passed and it was now time for the managers to show their plants to the CEO. Five of them arrived with pots containing lush, green growth. Doug arrived with a red face and a pot of dirt, stayed at the back of the room and tried to hide both.
The CEO called the meeting to order and asked each manager to show his (or her) plant and what he had done to care for it. Doug squirmed all the way through the presentations and thought several times about running from the room.
It was Doug’s turn. He showed the pot of dirt and explained his efforts. Victorious looks flashed across the faces of the other managers as they realized that the competition pool had been reduced from six to five.
After hearing from all the managers, the CEO slowly stood and announced that Doug would be the new CEO.
Shock silenced the room.
The CEO went on to explain that the seeds he had given them were dead so he knew that none of the lush, green plants in those pots had come from the seed he had given them. If he couldn’t give them a seed to plant and take care of for six months and trust that they would be honest about the results and the process that got them there, how could he possibly give them his company to take care of for ANY length of time?
On the other hand, Doug had watered, fertilized, nurtured and worried. He had never given up. He was honest about the results even when they were unfavorable.
This CEO used “bad seed” to avoid selecting a “bad seed” as his successor.
It’s a great story which reinforces the importance of our Quote of the Week from George Washington plus these other wise words from Washington.
1. “I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”
2. “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.”
3. “Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.”
Note: Each of these quotes is available to post on your computer screen. See instructions below.
Questions for you:
1. Could this be the 11th way to avoid “bad seed“? How practical is it? Would you be willing to try this exercise with your management team?
2. Are there other ways you could use this “test” strategy instead of actually using dead mustard seeds?
3. If you want people to be honest with you, consider this question. Do you make it safe for them to be honest with you? Read: Do you feel safe? for more on this.
Want to use wise words from Washington as background or wallpaper for your computer?
You can do so with just three clicks. See images and directions below.
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This is the Quote of the Week. |
Directions for uploading one of above images to your computer screen:
1. Click on the image.
2. Right click on the enlarged image that appears.
3. On the pull down menu that also appears, click on “set as background”.
Voila! There’s still plenty of room on the left side of the screen for all your shortcut icons.
There are 130 additional quotes in our Quote Library.
Valuable business tools, ready to post, print and share – available for free right here in our Quote Library.
Note: If you don’t like your new wallpaper, don’t want to replace it with a quote from the Business Class Quote Library and don’t know how to get rid of it……
Go to your control panel. Select “Display”. Select “Desktop”. And then choose from the designs offered.”
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