Describe an important decision you made in the absence of your boss.?

Answer 1

to never let my boss back into his office again.

Answer 2

Christine,

First, "It is easier to get forgivness than permission".

Second, "Behold the turtle that never makes progress without sticking his/her neck out".

I have hired people, placed "verbal purchase orders" and comitted the company to performance issues. I would suppose that I stuck my neck out.

Now here is a little background. I report directly to the president of a medium sized company and have NO DEFINED authority, NONE!

I think that the best one was this guy showed up with some product to sell and did not know what he had. He was gone and accounting sure wasn't going to give me a few grand out of petty cash or write a check. I made a deal with the guy and hit the ATM after I took his stuff into the warehouse. I came back and offered him 50% cash or a check for the full amount, he took the cash. I put the stuff on the floor with a specific SKU and sold it in a week at 600% GPM.

I told the president what I had done and he wrote me a check for the amount plus 10%. If the product hadn't sold, I would have EATEN IT and chalked it up to education.

If you do CRAZY STUFF you just have to have the personal confidence and knowledge to make it work for the company.

I hired two people on my own with no HR blessing etc. They showed up and it was interesting for about an hour with the president wanting a TON of answers. I gave him his answers, gave him my reasoning chain and TOOK FULL RESPONSIBILITY. The president said, "I am NEVER going to take another day off while HE is here, but do the paperwork and monitor. They have become model employees, HR is PI##ED and I have been forgiven; I do all the hiring now.

The KEY is if you want to jump out there, do it with CONFIDENCE, BACKUP and be prepared to be ACCOUNTABLE.

Sure, I LIVE ON the EDGE but isn't it more FUN than putting in your eight and going home to TV and NO PASSION for your job?

Take a chance and see what happens.

GOOD QUESTION!
J