I find myself caught in the middle between two competing operators. If you read the blog regularly, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I won’t go into the details, but I think we should take a peek that the "good" or "harm" these accusatory fights do to our industry, and to those involved.
I have always believed that there are two sides to every story. Depending on who is telling, the story sounds great. Incidents that take place that cause the problems often are more complicated that they appear after the fact.
My hero Winston Churchill was criticized for allowing the Germans to bomb Coventry into dust even though he knew it was going to happen. However if he had stopped the bombing, the Germans would have know the Brits had cracked their codes and many MANY hundreds of thousands may have been lost. Someone had to make a decision, under pressure, on the spot. Most would have formed a committee. Often that’s not reasonable. No committee ever made a decision. All they do is make recommendations.
Its the same with most decisions made in business. We have to make them and then live with the consequences. If we decide to focus our efforts on operations, and neglect the infrastructure of our company, then something at some point will suffer. Often its a question of what you can live with. Better operations, more cash flow, a positive bottom line, or as in my case, a perfect magazine. In the beginning I elected to provide the former, and later when the bottom line approached positive, I began to focus on the latter.
The conflict between two operators I mentioned above has a bit of truth in both sides. As the onion is peeled, we find that maybe one side should have pulled its punches a bit, and the other could have taken a bit more care in its operations. However the flap will definitely cause damage to an already damaged industry.
Should I have removed the offending blog comment? If I do that the benefit of a blog is lost. However we should, I think, police ourselves as we consider what we write. Remember, a blog is in fact published. Anyone can see it, and read it. If you want to rave at someone, do it direct, not in public. If you have a problem with me, don’t worry, you can do it in public. I don’t care. I can hold my own and by the nature of this blog, if I make myself look like a fool, that’s my problem. However you might consider taking an attack to the source, if you have to.
My wife says that you should write the email/blog lambasting someone, put every invective you can think of in it, and then, just before you send it, hit the delete button. Then sit down and write it again.
You’d be surprised the difference it makes.
JVH
