A Guest Post by
Rahil Muzafar

Clarity Can Be Kind

Not very long ago, I used to work in an advertising agency, as the supervisor of a team of content and copywriters. We were a small advertising firm that catered to even smaller businesses. My department was responsible for writing copy for both online and offline ads, churning out blog posts for our corporate blog, and occasionally writing press releases. The overall workload was quite manageable and the procedure fairly simple … products and clients’ requirements were allocated to different writers, they’d write a copy and forward it to me. I’d take a look, make necessary changes and send the work to the concerned department. Being the supervisor, I was in charge of proofreading before the content was finalized and processed.

Now, some writers I had were quite a misfit (and I am trying to be polite when I say “misfit”). Some of them were not even recruited as the writers; instead they had been drafted from other departments because they had demonstrated a good comprehension of English grammar. That wasn’t my decision of course, because for me, English comprehension comes at the very end of the list of requisites for the job of copywriting. Common sense and creativity is what I’d like to see in a writer by default, since neither common sense nor the creativity can be taught, oh and good research skills are a plus.

Anyway, going back to our story …

the copy these writers produced mostly ended up as some desperate attempts to be creative, and the worse part is, these attempts fell flat nine times out of ten. The copy hardly made any sense and most were far off the mark.

I never told them in clear words that what they should be looking for another career because creative writing is beyond their ken. But because I didn’t have much to do (and also because I couldn’t think of a polite way to show them the door) I would rewrite their entire work in the name of reviewing. Note that I m not trying to brag about my instant copywriting skills, the thing is that most of our clients were small sized businesses operating in the local market, so they were not looking for the extraordinary, therefore it was pretty easy for me to transform the wayward into something of quality.

Occasionally, I’d call one of the writers to say he or she had failed to write anything sensible, following the information with a motivational speech encouraging the writer to pull out all stops to improve. I wanted to give them some time to learn (even though my acumen kept telling me that they didn’t have the “thing” needed for this job).

Months went by, and it turned out that I was right, none showed any considerable improvement, the nonsense-ness in their written pieces was as obvious as the first day, and there was hardly an instance when I didn’t follow reading their copies with a frown.

Then, it got a little ugly. Owing to the worsening business conditions; the company (and its staff) was pushed out of its comfort zone. After an aggressive marketing campaign, and a stream of new clients, we found ourselves in the middle of a hell lot more work, and tougher deadlines. It didn’t take long before my customary frowns turned into ferocious hair-pullings. More clients and more work meant that I didn’t have the kind of time for working on their substandard copy to meet requirements. Occasional call-ups turned into frequent warnings. Fast forward a few months, and one by one, most of them had been drafted back to their old departments or discharged from their duties.

Only a couple of them survived and even then, they seemed totally out of place whenever we were brainstorming new ideas to work on.

That was my first challenge as a manager, and I learned one very important lesson, which has helped me later on my entrepreneurial ventures, and that’s … being too lenient or too forgiving to your staff/workers/employees is actually a disfavor to your company, to you, to other workers, and to them.

That doesn’t mean you should go on a sacking spree as soon as you feel some of your staff is not up to the scratch, but being too lenient will eventually have following consequences.

The company suffers:

Being the owner (or the manager) you must make sure that the organization or your department is performing at the optimum level, and that the business is utilizing the available resources in the most efficient manner. Therefore, even when the business is doing exceedingly well, doesn’t mean that you should start accommodating some incompetent workers, if you are keen to help out some needy persons, there are other ways of doing that.

Generally speaking, an incompetent person’s gain is a competent person’s loss. If you are feeling remorse when sacking an incompetent worker because the job market is saturated, remember that out there, in the market, there might be a qualified person sitting jobless and waiting desperately for an opportunity.

You suffer:

Being an entrepreneur, all your efforts, plans, and strategies will miss the target if you’ve got weak links working at any position. Besides, it will create enormous pressure when you have to watch over each and everything because you cannot trust your workers.

Other employees suffer:

When a department or a team consists of some inept members, the entire department has to put up with their lack of ability and clumsiness. And that’s not all, slowly but surely, it will start transmitting a demoralizing effect on the entire workforce.

Even they are going to suffer:

It’s far better to be honest with your employees as compared to being unnecessarily nice. If some of your workers are going amiss, let them know that they are not good enough. Otherwise, the sudden sacking will be even more devastating.

Give up being too forgiving and get better at matching people to what they do well instead.

Rahil Muzafar

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This post was contributed by Rahil, but these tips are not the only thing that he can offer. You may find coupon for norton and go daddy voucher at his website.

Thanks! Rahil!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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