Juggling Your Various New Year's Resolutions

by Terrill Fischer

So, we're moving into a new year, and what's more synonymous with the new year than resolutions. Right? This time you really, really want to do things right.

You resolve many new beginnings and changes, both in your personal life and your business life. You start out great, then a day or two passes and it's getting harder to keep your word.

Trying to carry out resolutions is like trying to lose weight while you're sitting in a Dairy Queen. It's tempting to reach for that ice cream, just like it's tempting to go back to your old behaviors.

As I said, you really want to do it right, but the truth is, you won't — and here's why. You're already stuck in some habits that are hard to break, and as hard as you try, they just keep on happening. So, let's take a tongue-and-cheek look at some of those bad habits, and then offer some fun resolutions/solutions:

• Habit: You overburden your staff. After all, there's much to be done and you can't hire more people, so each person just takes on more.
  
  Solution: Bring in a juggler to teach everybody juggling so they'll be able to handle more. That way, instead of dropping the ball on your biggest customer, they can drop several of them at once.

• Habit: You always spend more than you make.
  
  Solution: Turn off the elevators and make everyone use the stairs; that will save lots of money on electricity and will force everyone to exercise.
  
  Cancel the fire insurance and buy a used firetruck for the employees to staff.
  
  Have the annual company holiday bash moved from a hotel banquet room to an abandoned building. And, oh yeah, how about just make more money?

• Habit: You overpromise and underdeliver. Your eyes are bigger than your head.
  
  Solution: Hide in the closet, turn your phones off, avoid everyone so you don't have to deliver when you're not ready. Besides, it doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.

• Habit: You insist that employees keep their nose to the grindstone. After all, work is work and breaks are too frivolous, and besides, they've got you fooled because they know how to look busy without really being busy.
  
  Solution: Install 10-minute "play breaks" every hour, so that way they'll work when they work and play when they play — unless, of course, they don't.

• Habit: You never smile or laugh. What if it became contagious and everyone started to do it? That would be an awful way to get employees to do their jobs.
  
  Solution: Once a week, insist that everyone put on his or her worst scowl, and give the "sour puss award" to the person whose mug shot gives everyone a bad attitude.

• Habit: You find yourself being serious all the time, and then one day in a meeting you tell someone you're dead serious and he hands you a shovel.
  
  Solution: Start wearing a bright red clown nose and see how people don't take you seriously anyhow, or eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

• Habit: You resolve to communicate better with your people.
  
  Solution: Issue a company memo that states, "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees."

• Habit: You're always right — no one knows better than you.
  
  Solution: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question: "How would Mike Wallace of `60 Minutes' handle this?" Watch old episodes of "Dallas" and study how master of arrogance J.R. Ewing would handle things.

• Habit: You fire people easily — that way, you avoid solving your problems. But you've forgotten how much you could save by not having to train someone new.
  
  Solution: Fire everyone except your accountants and make them show you how much money you're saving by doing everything yourself, and always remember the last person who gets fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.

• Habit: You abdicate responsibility and always blame others for whatever is wrong.
  
  Solution: Hire a "blame consultant" and give out annual "blame awards." At least that way, those people will feel acknowledged and honored.

• Habit: You always invoke the "Dilbert Principle." You promote only the idiots to management positions.
  
  Solution: Hire only idiots to begin with and promotions are unnecessary.

So, obviously, you've got your whole company under control. Who needs resolutions anyhow?

Then again, you could just resolve to procrastinate making any new resolutions until next year — provided you still are in business.

 »Visit the Humor U Store!

Humor University specializes in helping workplaces like yours to assess the level of contentment that employees have for their jobs, assesses the "humor quotient" or "laughitude" of your work environment, and then trains and coaches you to excellence in the "Humor in the Workplace" arena.

 »Learn More About Our Coaching!