[MUSIC] As you try to decide what to do, what you would do, in a circumstance where there was a deadline, and it had been missed and you were trying to decide whether to include it because it might affect other people, let's hear what some of our experts have to say about it. >> This goes back to the fundamental value, and kind of one of my personal leadership rules is that, look, own it. So this manager who did not submit those on time, you failed. You have to own that because I can promise you, it's not going to be the last time. And, again, I've talked about really having the personal courage to stand fast on those kind of rules. And sometimes they're not necessarily popular, but it's the right thing to do. You're putting yourself in a position, and it's not your responsibility to have gotten that. There are rules, and this manager knew the rules. If that manager failed to meet the rules, that manager needs to own accountability for not getting it in on time. If that person's looking for an exception, they need to take that up beyond you to get that exception. Doing it under the wire or doing it by falsifying the report is absolutely the wrong thing to do. The right thing to do is to say, no, I can't count it. But if you would like to ask for an appeal or ask for an exception, you can talk to my boss or you can talk to my boss's boss and see if you can get an exception. You don't have to own that responsibility, that manager owns that responsibility, they failed. They need to take responsibility for making it right. >> Sales people are by nature very competitive. And they're encouraged to be competitive by the creation of commission and bonus programs. Data is critical to the success of a commission program, it's critical to the success of an annual bonus program. If you don't get the data in on time, it's impossible to determine whether or not you really have met the core objectives. So timeliness, and timeliness of the data submission, is really critical. If you have turned in your information too late, nobody's going to get the bonus. And so the two minute challenge in this particular scenario is can you, in fact, put something in a prior period simply by documenting it that way when, in fact, you missed the deadline? I think a missed deadline is something that you can actually work through and deal with by working with your financial folks and with your supervisor. If you've actually made the sale, and it's actually been documented, and you missed the deadline for some kind of a good reason, this is a perfect conversation to have with your supervisor, to bring in the financial folks, to look at all of this information and data, and see whether it's possible to put the data into the proper period, even if you failed to properly enter it at that particular moment. There are other problems, however, that often come up in a sales context, and those, broadly, fall under this concept of channel stuffing. They're loads of examples of these kinds of behaviors, and many of them are designed to falsely inflate sales data so that people benefit from the commission payment or the bonus when they really shouldn't. And that kind of behavior represents the height of professional irresponsibility, in my view. And it's something that creates many problems for companies. Not only financial reporting problems, but also manufacturing and distribution problems, not to mention long-term relationships with customers who you have falsely claimed purchased product when, in fact, they have not. Or you claim they have purchased product. And then you fill out return information after the deadline has passed in order to ensure that you get credit in the first period, and then you have the product returned afterwards. Those kinds of behaviors are causing all sorts of problems throughout the supply chain, throughout the process within your company, and are not really behaviors that are going to, for the long-term, benefit the organization or you, personally. There are many reasons that you might want to move reporting from one period to another and it's not all built around bonuses and structures. Maybe somebody wants to obtain financing, for example, and you need to show a reasonable collection of numbers that will encourage the banks or whoever's providing the financing to do so. So there are a lot of reasons that somebody might do this, most of them are not reasons that are going to help your business survive over the long haul. >> How does this dilemma fit in with organizational culture? Or does it? Well, if you think about it, the organizational culture will affect how much deadlines matter. Is this a place where people set deadlines and hold them? You'll be thinking about that in the organization and, as you try to make your decision, all those factors will make a huge difference. Is this a place that people do what they say and say what they'll do? Or is it in general more relaxed about all kinds of issues? The other thing is is that your decision will not only be influenced by organizational culture, it will influence organizational culture because it helps to set the culture, or re-enforce it or change it. A former student of mine told me about a really unhappy experience he'd had in his first management job, where somebody had brought him some paperwork to sign and the documentation, the required documentation, wasn't there. And the guy sort of talked him into it, referring to the fact that they'd both been students together and knew each other. So he signed it. Later on, then, he overheard the guy in the coffee room making fun of him, and saying to people, this guy's a pushover. You can tell him anything and he'll buy it. That was kind of an unhappy thing to recover from. So, the organizational culture will matter, what you do will matter. It will influence the organizational culture and change, and it will affect your effectiveness and reputation as a leader. [MUSIC] [SOUND]
