From The Desk Of Robin Robins
Stupid ,
Multiplied
By Robin Robins , Founder & CEO – Big Red Media
As many of you know , I have a beach house in Florida along the Gulf of Mexico . Recently , three people were attacked by a shark on the same day , and five drowned after getting caught in a rip current . The shark attacks are rare , but the drownings due to the riptides here , sadly , are not .
Three of the people who drowned were young men who decided to go out for a late-night swim at dusk , when sharks are most active and aggressive for feeding — just weeks after the shark attacks in the same area where they were swimming . Furthermore , there are warning signs everywhere down here about the riptides , including the double red flags posted along the beach the night of the drownings alerting people to NOT go into the water .
My heart breaks for those who died — and yet a part of me can ’ t help but recall the Einstein quote : “ Two things are infinite : the universe and human stupidity , and I ’ m not sure about the universe .”
We ALL do dumb things , screw up , and make mistakes — but some mistakes are a LOT worse than others , particularly if they are all part of a series of bad choices made back-toback and compounded ( swimming at night , with red flags , with aggressive sharks in the water feeding , with no lifeguard around ).
In business ( and in life ), I don ’ t think you need to be a genius to win . You simply need to try to make fewer stupid decisions . If you think about it , nearly every bad thing that has happened to you in business can be traced back to a stupid decision or , more accurately , a long list of stupid decisions repeated that piled on top of each other to eventually take you out .
A bad hire won ’ t end you — but if you KEEP that bad hire around , refuse to manage or monitor them , allowing them more time to entrench themselves , steal from you , push customers away , and spread their special kind of toxicity throughout your team , the entire place can be
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