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I'd like to retrace the steps of how some decisions get made...
Much to the delight of cheeseheads everywhere, the Green Bay Packers are in the Super Bowl. They beat my Bears to do it...I'll have to live with that.
It really is quite an amazing feat since sixteen of their players were on injured reserve (out for the season and inactive because of injury).
Several days ago they announced their schedule for Super Bowl week. Part of their schedule was this: the team would fly down to Dallas on Monday; the traditional team photo would be taken on Wednesday; the injured players would fly down on Thursday.
Wait. Stop. Could you repeat that please?
The team flies down on Monday, team photo on Wednesday, injured players fly down on Thursday. So the injured players will arrive after the photo was taken?
Which means...the injured players...would not...be in...the team photo. Who made that decision?
The injured players were understandably hurt, feeling like they were tossed aside and not an important, valued and respected part of the team. A few voiced their hurt. They have seen the team photos at Lambeau Field of the great Packer teams from the past with the Ray Nitchkes, the Bart Starrs, the Randy Whites, etc. It means a lot to them to be included.
Most of these athletes are successful powerful personalities and millionaires. But it is this little thing...this little gesture, or lack of a gesture...that means so much to them. No one could see that it would?
Injured players had always been a part of the team photos in the past. One Packer executive coughed up a lame, "But there were just so many of them." There was also some thought that so many players down there so early not participating might be a bad influence on the active players. Really?
And it turns out there are some internal disputes with some of the healthy players maybe feeling the injured did not do enough to be around the team during the season. If that's the case, the coaching staff should have dealt with that a long time ago. Excluding them from the team picture would be just silly and petty.
To their credit, the Packers' brass reversed their decision and those players will be in Dallas on time for the team photo.
But my question remains: how does a decision like that get made in the first place? This is an example of the immediate perceived benefits blinding leaders and making them insensitive to the long term ramifications of a decision made.
If these players were excluded and made to feel unimportant now, it would affect their long term trust and belief in the organization they work for. That lowers loyalty and morale and then ultimately effort.
We stave off a perceived headache today only to give ourselves a migraine later by losing the most precious commodity leaders have-highly motivated, keenly focused and supremely energized human beings.
It's usually the little things...really, the easy things.
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