The more I work with companies the more I realize that all this talk about having courage and not being afraid to do the right thing when it needs to be done is true. From when it’s time to hire someone, or to reprimand someone or yes, the worst one of all to fire some many of us will do anything we can do avoid doing the right thing

The best run companies are run by managers who are not afraid do what they need to do. Conversely poorly run companies are managed by people who cannot make a decision if their life depended on it. They procrastinate until it’s too late participating in analysis paralysis and using that to fool themselves into thinking that’s doing something

Great managers act. Great managers are not afraid of anything, they are:

• Not afraid to get involved in that new technology even if buying that equipment is risky.
• Not afraid to hire that new process engineer, even if he is very expensive.
• Not afraid to have a hard talk with someone who is not doing his job.
• Not afraid to change the direction of the company.
• Not afraid to take the time to learn new things.
• Not Afraid to change their minds.
• Not afraid to fire that person who needs to be fired.
• Not afraid to do the right thing for their customer even if it hurts the company.
• Not afraid to put the customer first, whatever it takes.
• Not afraid to say she was wrong.
• Not afraid to build that addition.
• Not Afraid of handling cash flow issues head on.
• Not afraid to say “no” no matter how hard it is.
• Not afraid to make that decision when it has to be made, even if he doesn’t have all the facts.
• Not afraid to stand up against conventional wisdom.
• Not afraid to face his own flaws and do something to fix them
• Not afraid to hire people smarter than she is.

Years ago, I was working with a company that had cornered the market on the ability to fabricate high tech PCBs from a material called LMR Kevlar. I say “cornered the market” because they were literally the only shop in the industry that had managed to learn to build MLBs with this very quirky laminate. Every year for five years we could count on at least three million dollars of business from two customers, two of the defense and aerospace industry’s OEM’s. Our relationship with them was very good and the business was just about guaranteed. Then one day we were faced with a very difficult decision. We had been working with several laminate suppliers and had helped them develop a new product called Thermount. The thing about this new Thermount material was that it had all of the characteristics of LMR Kevlar but it was much easier to work with and was only one fourth the price. This meant that just about any good board shop could now build boards that had the need for LMR Kevlar; so we would lose our edge over our competitors plus the price of the over-all program would go down because the material was now much less expensive.

“So, what do we do?” We asked ourselves. Do we tell our customers about Thermount and stand a chance of losing the business? Or, best case keeping the business but at a much lower price, or do just stay mum about it? In this case, the best and the right thing to do as good vendors… and good people was to tell our customers about this better solution. It was an easy decision but a hard pill to swallow in the end. And yes, they used LMR Kevlar for only one more year and then switched to Thermount which of course opened the program up to a much more competitive environment. We ended up losing the program a couple of years later. But, telling them was the right thing to do and we were not afraid to do it. It did take courage to face the fact that we were going to hurt our sales by a few million dollars of very profitable business a year. Now, looking back on this incident over twenty years later it is a decision that we are proud we made.

Never be afraid to do the right thing, even though sometimes it will hurt, it will pay off in the end. By the way even though we lost that particular program we did have a good ongoing relationship with those customers for years to come. Its only common sense.