As an entrepreneur, how to manage traces of poop in your office’s toilet?
I suppose you know where I was when the idea of this article came to my mind. This situation seeemed perfect to me for an article. Despite the subject, I intend to use this pathetic situation to talk about some managerial concepts and unexpected situations we have to deal with as an entrepreneur.
I started my company with a friend during my studies at university. I was 20 years old. Today I am 37 and I still run the same company, with the same purpose and with the same friend. I never worked for anyone except for me and my company. It gives me some blindness regarding the way an employee could feel. But it also gives me a lot of experience, many fails and mostly many anecdotes and stories like this one.
To run the company, we are a small team of 8–10 full time people. As we mainly engage juniors and as changing frequently of job is part of the 21 century habits and trends we have already hired and trained more than 60 people during those 17 years of activity. During that period, we fired only one person and all the others just quit after variable periods from 0 hours to several years.
We always consider our colleagues as part of the team whatever happens. If something goes wrong, if somebody does not fit the job well, we always use to consider as our duty to fix it by helping, training and support. That is not very clever as a business point of view. Maybe it is by weakness and excess of positivism more than human empathy. Hard to tell. Hopefully, we also have a colleague that work with us for 10 years and another for 7 years. With me and my co-founder friend that makes a strong foundation that compensate the fickle trends of our millennials. No offense.
Well let’s dive into shit now (really). Why do I talk about poop trace in office toilet and why inside a human resource and entrepreneurial context? Well because it always inspires me a lot of thoughts.
The first one is obvious. Who did that and why? Is this behavior which could seems unrespectful and dirty a reflect of this person state of mind?
Is it intended or is it without any purpose?
As an entrepreneur and owner of the office, do I have to clean it myself so the next user of the bathroom, who could come in a minute and who might be a future colleague or a potential customer, won’t start questioning my company seriousness?
As a leader, do I have to clean it myself because no matter who did this, leading by doing is a styling motto?
As a leader, do I have to take a photo, make a public statement of it and declare that, in the name of the company, I solemnly declare that letting poop trace in the toilet can’t be part of the company’s culture?
How would some known leaders like Elon Musk, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos deal such situation? You will tell me that they have probably private toilet. Ok. Good point. But to be confirmed. They probably don’t care. Maybe. But that is not relevant. Because I do.
Am I disturb to have that kind of though and to raise so much questions from some ounces of human fecal matter?
During those 17 years as an entrepreneur, I had to deal with a lot of hard situations: human problems, stealing, personal doubts, financial issues, withdrawal of investors, unexpected legal changes, technical breakdowns,… Me and my associate have always managed to go through. But the only thing I’m sure is that whatever I do and how good I am doing them, I’ll always be sometimes in front of some shit that does not belong to me but that I’ll have to clean. Because it is what entrepreneurs do.
Today, I will not answer the questions I raised. I just give them to you. It is my gift. And maybe some good will come from it. I hope.
If you want more stories like this one, please let me know.
With all my entrepreneurial love,
Michael
