Doug E. Pudge

Good Decision Making

You know, I was thinking. God has blessed me with the fact that I have a job and that I can earn a resonable living! Most of you who know me have heard me whine and complain about the company where I work. There is no question in my mind that I am not doing what I wish I could be doing to make a living, but.................................I am making a living. I have spent all of my morning either preparing for or being in meetings. Meetings are one of those necessary evils of Corporate America! They do serve a purpose but they certainly interfere with what I believe I should be doing. But, I go to them without complaining or whining and do what I have to do. The president of our company made the decision that she needed all of the managers together after our weekly staff meeting to hold a mini-seminar on the "Decission Making Process"! Now, I am not against learning new and insightful ways of looking at our existance as a corporation and I am aware that I don't have all of the answers, but some of my piers don't have the same attitude.
As I do in most of our meetings I sit there and do a lot of listening and really do not speak unless spoken to (yes, this was a hard thing to learn). Today I realized why I do that. During both meetings today the president and the operations manager were going back and forth with each other and never really took the time to listen to what the other had to say! They both had a point to make (more like an axe to grind) and they were both right and wrong about what they were talking about. They had enough common ground to be able to discuss things rationally, but chose not to do that. As I sat and listened to this going on and on and on...I realized that they were starting to talk about things that involved me. I also realized that pretty soon I was going to be "spoken to" and would have to actually express a thought. So here I am quietly taking notes and the question comes "Doug, what do you think?". I took a deep breath, lowered my voice, spoke distinctly and slowly and I gave my answer. At that moment the heated battle stopped and all eyes were focused on me! All of a sudden, I had the ball in my court and had to continue to explain why I thought something didn't work! After I was finished, I sat back, looked at my notes and began listening again. I realized then that all the arguing that had been going on had ceased and the meeting finished on a high note! A soft answer does indeed turn away anger. It just caught me by surpise today. Looks like I learned something about making good decisions. Be blessed beyond belief today.

posted by Doug E. Pudge @ 1:10 PM