Boss Tip #12 - Pruning The Garden Without Spraying Chemicals

For those of you who have never had a garden, this may seem completely incomprehensible but play along with me would you please?

In the park across the street from my house is perhaps one of the world's largest dandelion plantations. Now to choose between herbicides in a public park and weeding out a few dandelions a week in my yard is a simple decision for me: weeding is easy enough and better for the rest of us. With that being said, let me tell you that we have a good sized garden in our backyard. Strawberries, raspberries, peas, beans, carrots, zucchini and herbs are all up. So is the crop of chickweeed, quackgrass, dandelions and other assorted weeds.

The biggest job in the garden, after planting, is pruning - getting rid of the plants that suck moisture and nurients from the earth that the garden plants need.

This whole pruning concept is not much different for bosses: weeding out the people who suck the motivation and ethic from your good workers and kicking their butts to the curb. In the same way you wouldn't put weeds into a compost bin (you're just replanting the weed seeds in the compost), don't try to find another place in the company for the cynics, the ne'er-do-wellers, the negative Nellies, the slackers and the armchair CEO's (those who think they have all the answers and could do a better job than you). That's like pulling a weed and replanting it in a different part of the garden. By placing them in another department, you are simply encouraging their bad behaviour.

Don't think that a blanket policy is going to fix everything either. That's like spraying chemicals across the whole garden. Everything in the path of the spray will be affected. Do the hard work, the dirty work and get your hands dirty. Pull each weed by hand leaving the rest of the garden untouched and unaffected.

Weeds are not welcome in your department. As a boss, it is your responsibility to ensure that your good plants produce the fruits of their labours without being impeded by weeds.

Get my meaning here? Get it done ... today.