(I just heard on the radio, DirecTV may be backing out of the deal, but, I had most of this written already)

I previously wrote about the first lesson I learned from my 20 plus years at Dish Network, and today I am hitting on the second lesson.  If you read the first article, you know that Dish is a difficult and unique company to work for. Another reason for this was the culture brought on by some old school management styles. Our founder was once asked in and interview why he didn't offer all the benefits to his employees that the new tech companies in Silicon Valley were offering. He simply said, "If you are looking for free lunch and energy drinks, and a break room with a pool table, please go work for them, if you want to work hard and be challenged and get promoted quickly and have a real chance at being a VP, stay here." It wasn't just talk, our CEO at that time was a guy that started as an entry level Account Manager and worked his way up, my first VP started as a forklift driver. 

With that in mind, back to my second lesson. I had just got a promotion and was in a meeting with a Senior VP, a guy named Nick. Nick was a ex college football player, built like a truck and had an old scar running down his face. He was more than comfortable cussing out employees in meetings and on calls and could be a scary guy, he was probably worse when he was so mad he wasn't even cussing.  I should say, he also new his stuff. If you were presenting in a meeting with him, you better be ready to answer detailed questions from a guy that new more than you. Plus, he would also have you over to his house for dinner after work if you were in from out of town and walk you around his garden, he wasn't all bad. 

So anyway, in this meeting, two young new tech guys were talking about a project where we had missed some goals. These two guys went on the explain that we missed the goals because another department didn't do what they were supposed to do. This may seem like a decent answer, but, not for Nick.  "It's not my fault" is never the correct answer. Nick spent the next twenty minutes making sure these guys new how they screwed up, what was expected, why at this company we didn't blame other people for not hitting goals. As these two guys were getting cussed out in front of a room full of people, you could see on there faces that they weren't going to be the type of people that would make it at Dish. By the next time I was back out at the home office a few months later, they were both gone.  

Now, you can have your issues with a guy like Nick being in charge, I sure did.  I saw him punch a hole in a wall one time while he was on a call, but, the lesson was solid.  I learned that higher ups didn't really care whose fought something was (within reason) they cared about solutions.  If you were addressing a problem, it better be with answers on how you would solve it, not with blame. In fact, I found the best way to address an issue was to take responsibility first. If you started with saying this is my issue and then offered solutions, you diffused the situation. There was no need for your bosses to address it, because you had already said it was your problem. If you followed through, you had a great opportunity to talk about it the next meeting. If you didn't fix it, well it was still Dish Network, so get ready to take your lumps.