If You Don't Make Waves, You'll Drown

This is not your typical business book. You won't find academic remedies to your business challenges or exhortations to create a warmer and fuzzier workplace. In fact, you'll find the opposite-tips on how to be a tougher, take-no-prisoners-style manager. It's time to stop letting workplace political correctness push you around and get serious about your business.

In If You Don't Make Waves, You'll Drown, Dave Anderson doesn't pull any punches. Offering simple wisdom and politically incorrect solutions that really work, he's not here to inspire you, but to taunt you into action. He shows you how to be more direct without being disrespectful; how to give honest feedback even when it hurts; and how to hold employees accountable for results. In short, you'll learn how to get the most out of your business.

Want more politically incorrect wisdom?

• Tenure is a license for laziness
• Diversity without competence is worthless
• Don't trade your values for valuables
• Political correctness is a disease that destroys the workplace
• It's time to fight back!

Preface viii

Acknowledgments xvi

Author’s Note xvii

Introduction 1

1 Don’t Be a Wimp! 11

2 Eliminate Entitlements: Send the Moochers Packing! 41

3 Don’t Confuse the Scoreboard for the Game! 65

4 Sometimes You Have to Tick People Off! 91

5 Learn to Read between the Lies! 109

6 Ditch Diversity and Go for Results! 135

7 Don’t Just Win . . . Run Up the Score! 153

8 Spare the Rod, Spoil the Sluggard! 177

9 Don’t Make People Happy. . . .Make Them Better! 193

10 Don’t Trade Your Values for Valuables! 203

Notes 233

Bibliography 235

About the Author 236

DAVE ANDERSON is President of Dave Anderson's Learn to Lead, and LearntoLead.com^®, a cutting edge Web site that provides free training resources to people in more than thirty countries. He is a member of the National Speakers Association and is a featured speaker at conventions worldwide. He is also the author of Up Your Business!, from Wiley.

Today's businesses are mired in mediocrity. The current trend toward increased political correctness in society in general, and in the business world in particular, is making it tougher and tougher to get things done in the office. We've gone from tolerating peo-ple's differences to tolerating their shortcomings—and business is paying the price.

When society deems all behaviors and beliefs equally valid, society fails. As our culture's morality declines, so does its work ethic. Today, almost any behavior is tolerated, but you can't fire a bad employee for being a bad employee. If all other behaviors are okay, then it must be okay to be late for work too. When society changes for the worse so does business. The cancers of moral relativism and political correctness are destroying businesses just like they're destroying our society—and it's time to take a stand.

If You Don't Make Waves, You'll Drown is a guide for business leaders who are sick and tired of political correctness and its corrosive effect on the workforce—and are ready to do something about it. It shows business leaders how to stop the trend toward increasing workplace political correctness and how to tackle the crises it causes with leadership strategies that get results in times of mediocrity.

This book won't tell you how to make your employees happy. After all, who cares if they're happy if no one's working? Instead, it tells you how to motivate lazy employees, reward the winners, fire the losers, and run a tight and profitable ship. You won't find any touchy-feely gobbledy-gook about caring or being nice. Instead, you'll find simple, to-the-point wisdom that only sounds clichéd because it works.

But you'd better be tough enough to face the truth and fight the forces attacking your business. To change your company for the better, you have to be a strong leader and you have to be prepared to rock the boat. It's true, in today's politically correct business world, If You Don't Make Waves, You'll Drown.