Things you can learn from Steven Segal

Corporate Life

I know, I know. Horrible actor. Hollywood kung-fu. Runs like a girl. But every once in a while, there is a little gem hidden in one of his piece-of-crap films (not to mention that there is always some B-grade hottie trying to move up from Baywatch to the big screen). Anyhow, let me set the stage for this one.

So Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal) just happens to be on the same train that a bunch of mercenaries hijack and are going to use as the moving headquarters to commandeer a top-secret Government satellite to blow up the Pentagon for some middle-eastern terrorists. There's a bad guy, Travis Dane, that sends some thugs off to kill Ryback. They shoot him, and think they see him fall off the train, so they report back to Dane that Ryback is dead. Dane is unconvinced, and asks if they actually saw the dead body, or if they just assumed he was dead, because "assumption is the mother of all fuck ups". Needless to say, Ryback wasn't dead, managed to stop the terrorist plot, and killed Dane in a flurry of kung-fu blows and meat cleaver-wielding chops (Ryback is supposed to be a chef!).

So why is this relevant on corporate blog? Well, it's coming up on the end of December, and we're all in a mad panic to book orders in time to ship for quarter end. I don't know how many times I've come across situations in the last week or two where we'd have saved countless hours of work and many grey hairs, if we hadn't assumed anything. "They said they had everything in order, so I assumed everything was ok". "Everyone knows how important this deal is, so I assumed they would expedite it". "I'm part of the sales team, so I assumed that I would get credit for the deal just like everyone else". Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you really want to make sure things get done, you can't assume anything, because...

assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.

Originally Posted on: Dec 17, 2007